Peridot
by VesperChan
Summary: Sakura rides with an all girl gang of bikers called the Harpies in the city of NewDestruction where rival cyberpunk gangs made up of monsters like the Uchiha and Akatsuki chase her tail. With a taste for danger, sometimes Sakura runs too close to those monsters.


Sakura, a genetically modified experiment escaped from the lab, rides with an all girl gang of bikers called the Harpies in the city of NewDestruction where rival cyberpunk gangs made up of monsters like the Uchiha and Akatsuki chase her tail.  
With a taste for danger, sometimes Sakura runs too close to those monsters.

* * *

 **Peridot**

* * *

Beneath those stars is a universe of gliding monsters.  
-Herman Melville

* * *

"We'll be lucky if we can make heads or tails out of half this rubble," Shisui groaned, crouching down to look underneath an overturned desk. There were a few folders left open with loose papers partially scattered across the floor. He picked up one and then tossed it back into the mess, not able to read the code it was typed in. "Damn, they can do a lot of damage in twelve hours."

"Twelve hours is plenty," Itachi murmured, tapping the pads of his fingers over switched that were dead to the touch when pushed. The control panel he stood over had holes blasted into it from laser fire, so he doubted any part of it would ever work again.

"Isn't this something we can eyeball and go home from? I can't make head or tails of most the junk left behind anyway. If you wanted someone good with computers you should have brought Pein or Deidara. I'm useless with this junk."

There was a loud bang and Shisui looked up to see Itachi ripping apart the top sheet layer of the control panel to expose all the wires inside. Itachi stuck his hand down and pulled on something until it snapped free. A small silver square shaped device fell free and clattered to the base of the control panel. Itachi let go of his wire and reached for the silver device instead.

"I don't want to involve any more of the Akatsuki than I already have. They may be monsters, but they're not like you or I."

He turned the device over in his hand and it cracked, replacing several smaller green slides that looked like old school motherboards. He fingered through them until finding the one he wanted and throwing the rest away. Shisui came over to watch as Itachi went back over to the silver briefcase they brought together and pulled out a laptop in a hardshell. Shisui kept watch while his cousin took apart their own device and replaced it with the salvaged piece. When Itachi turned on the computer, the welcome screen was different.

"What did you find?" Shisui asked.

Itachi clicked through a few info screens, closing out boxes and typing in code shortcuts to find the most recent files. Three were a few things that came up that gave him pause, but over all Itachi was dedicated and efficient in his work. It wouldn't take him long to find what he wanted.

"More experiments," Itachi finally said.

He clicked through a few files, bring up a list of twenty or so icons. All were red except for one that was labeled yellow. The first red icon was a file for an experiment that ended up dead, the second was an aborted attempt. Itachi went back out and skipped down to the only yellow file. It came up after a second necessary to load, and they saw the file was far more extensive than the others.

"It wasn't a success though," Shisui said, reading the text at the top and realizing that was the reason it was marked as yellow and not green. "It didn't die but it's not here so what did they do with it. Did they dump this one too?"

"Yes, it looks like they deposited the Harpy project somewhere inside of NewDestruction. That's odd though."

"What is?" Shisui asked.

"They normally exterminate the infertile ones. Ever since the Oto lab was over run and all the experiments ran free they've been careful to tie up all loose ends. It doesn't make sense for them to let this one go free. They were running out of time, it would have been easier to just kill it."

Shisui leaned back, turning away from the computer and throwing his hands behind his head. He scanned the room again, finding it creepy but otherwise less than hostile. "It was one of Kabuto's projects, right? Maybe he didn't want to kill it because this one was special to him. I mean, he double crossed Sasori for the same reason right? He was supposed to create a hybrid for the puppet freak to control but ends up deciding he wants to keep it because of some interesting breakthrough. The little bastard was stupid to think he could get away with something like that. Sasori was livid."

"It's not wise to double cross any within the Akatsuki, but Sasori least of all."

Shisui nodded, understanding what his cousin meant. Deidara would get pissed and blow you up, and most of the other members would kill you right away, but Sasori would take his good old sweet time with the torture before the demise. He was dangerous.

Shisui snorted at the thought. "I know right? Kabuto could have been a little smarter and lied or said something like the project failed if he planned on keeping it for himself. But no, he has the balls to say straight out that he thinks he's gonna keep the damn thing. What a dick move for such a stupid dude. Even I'm not that stupid."

"Hn," Itachi thoughtfully hummed.

Shisui winced at his own words. "Never mind. Pretend I didn't say anything." But Itachi was already not listening to his friend and cousin. There was something more interesting on his computer.

"There's a video."

The screen flashed and the fan began to run hot and Shisui wondered if the file would even load, but soon the screen went green, then black, then white as the video's images came to the forefront. The blurry image came into focus and he felt the shock in the same moment he heard Itachi suck in his breath.

"Oh," was all the older cousin could manage to say.

Itachi didn't say anything, but his mind was buzzing with almost the same sentiment.

 _Oh_.

* * *

Sakura woke up atop a pile a garbage feeling like someone had played hammer with her head. Maybe it was because her head was left resting on a solid concrete surface while the rest of her body seemed elevated atop oversized black trash bags filled with garbage. Sakura tilted her hips, sliding the rest of her body off the bags so that she was level again. Her body moved like it was made of lead instead of bones. Her ribs expanded and contracted like something made to rust, and she winced at the pain in her chest.

Sakura splayed her hands out to brace herself and pushed up off the concrete, wincing the whole way up. It was such a small thing, but it felt like she was pulling herself up piece by broken piece. Her head pounded and her back ached. She felt like a hunchback with all the bruises she felt between her shoulder blades. She must have fallen hard on something.

"What the hell did I do this time?" Sakura asked aloud, reaching up to rub the back of her head while looking up.

She was between skyscrapers. Both buildings were metal and glass and nothing else to her. Between the metal structures she saw patches of sky that were colored a murky black with night. Lights from the buildings all around made it seem brighter than it should be for what looked like the middle of the night. There were neon signs that glowed in flashes of harsh blue, green, red, and even yellow. Across the street she saw an orange sign animated to look like a crouching, then pouncing tiger. Below the light up animal was a sign that read 'The Leaping Tiger' in bold yellow letters.

There were more signs too, some with singing chime and others with cheap animations. Mixed in with the chatter and traffic of city life, Sakura was starting to wonder how she could have ended up in a trash heap without anyone noticing.

'Maybe someone did notice, maybe they just didn't care,' the logical side of her brain sneered.

There was something on the inside of her arm, just below her wrists where her veins stood out. It looked like a thin strip of barcode tattooed into her skin with white, iridescent ink. When she turned her wrist it shimmered. Her memories were foggy at best, but she didn't remember getting a wrist tattoo that looked like a cheap ass barcode from the Matrix.

She heard a crackle and looked up towards the sky and saw a helix pattern of light flash across the black expanse before fading and becoming invisible again. They were under a dome of artificial light and coloring. She was inside of a domed, walled city. That didn't make her nervous at all.

Cursing, Sakura rose to her feet and pitched forward a few steps before catching herself against a wall. Her legs hurt like hell, but she wasn't in so much pain that she couldn't walk, it was just difficult. She had to clench her jaw and breath out through her teeth, waiting for the tingling sensation to stop. If she didn't know better, she would have said her body felt like it just came out of surgery. Once before when she had her wisdom teeth removed, Sakura woke up with a less than positive reaction to the anesthetics, making her whole body tingle with the reintroduction to feeling. If that is what it was, she knew the pain was a fleeting thing. It would soon pass.

New barcode tattoo, crap reaction to the anesthetics, and no memory of how she got to a garbage heap. Yes, things were looking great for her. Her attitude was stellar.

No stranger to pain, Sakura dug her nails into her palms and squeezed until her hands bled. One step, two steps, one foot in front of the other, she moved her body forward. The wall was still there if she needed it, but she was stronger than that now. She could do it without the outside support. One step, two steps, one foot in front of the other, she moved her body forward. One step, two steps, one foot in front of the other.

She was on the sidewalk, a state that people swam around without looking. She didn't miss how many of the people on the street were walking around with electronic devices in their hands or screens in front of their faces projected from goggles over their eyes. Their sense of style was somewhat garish too, clinging and impractical.

Sakura touched her chest, feeling the cool fabric that wasn't cotton under her fingertips. It felt almost like the rubber gloves left in her sink for dishes, but softer, more accommodating to her physique. She was dressed in a white full body suit with black stripes down the sides. Over her body suit she wore an old, baggy jacket that might have been leather with stitching over the breast pockets. She didn't doubt there was something sewn onto the back as well. The sleeves had been all pushed up to show off her new tattoo, but she smoothed them down, covering it up again.

There was weight in her pockets, but she didn't bother to check that.

Across from her the store with the neon orange tiger flashed something that caught her eye. Outside was what looked like a kiosk with a barcode logo in silver painted around the base. There was a scanner under the screen that was perfect for scanning her tattoo. Maybe that's what she needed to do.

There was a street between her and her goal. She stepped onto it expecting to feel asphalt, but the road was made up of helix shaped tiles that light up with the pressure of her feet. The road blinked where she stepped and an angry face flashed before barking about 'it's against the law to jay walk.' There were a few cars that sped past her, all maneuvering around her, and even a few motorbikes that sounded like they ran off of angry electricity.

Someone shouted something nasty to her, but no one on the sidewalks seemed to mind her misbehaviors. Sakura ignored it all, running towards the kiosk that was looking more and more like a barcode reader the closer she got. Sure enough, the screen flashed with pictures of a stick man reading his barcode off the back of his hand. The placement was different, but Sakura got the message well enough. She pushed her sleeves back up and stuck her arm under the scanner. She felt nothing, but saw the red light flicker. The screen went white, and then an infinity sign started to spin as the data was processed. A second later, words fell down the page followed by a photo of her face.

Sakura sucked in a breath, seeing her name under her picture along with her height and weight. There was even information like her blood type and allergies.

To the side of her picture written in navy blue were the words LAMB- Generation 4.

Sakura touched the screen to roll the words up and read the rest of them. There was a start and end date that stretched between a two year span. Underneath it was more information that didn't make sense; words like Abduction Location, and hybrid bonding experiment made her shiver.

She scrolled down further, reading more.

Situation: Non Native.

Genetic splice sample: Lammergeier-Lamb Vulture.

Status: Nonviable-Dispose of Immediately.

Sakura yanked her arm out of the kiosk, jerking around to see if there was anyone watching her, if there was anyone with their eyes on her, waiting with the barrel of a rifle trained just on her. She felt the hair on the back of her neck stand on end and needed to get out of the open. She was too exposed. She needed to move somewhere else.

Thinking little of it, Sakura turned on her heel and pushed back the door to the shop with the neon orange tiger in its window. It was a restaurant bar with a bright orange ceiling made up of dense neon tube lights that flashed slowly on and off to look like they were moving. A low key techno beat pulsed through the hidden speakers all around her.

There were men in suits sitting at high tables and punk ass kids packed into booths. Everyone seemed to be dressed out of time, even if they were wearing what was familiar. Sakura saw more of those goggles and glasses and even a few hand held devices. At the front of the room on a seat all to himself sat a boy with long blond hair and one mechanical eye.

No one looked at her when she walked in.

Most of the eyes were trained on a pair standing opposite of each other, one a male, the other a young girl that couldn't be older than sixteen at the most. She looked scrappy and he looked sick in the head based off the way he eyed her. Sakura figured she must have missed the shit talking part, because in the next second the young girl screamed and launched into an uppercut that was blocked, followed by a right hook that actually landed. Her strike did minimal damage, and the creep recovered quickly, backhanding her so hard she fell backwards onto the floor where blood from her nose made an angry pattern.

"You and your kind need to learn you place. The harpies are a sickness, everyone thinks you should have died with the others."

"That's not what you were saying two minutes ago when you wanted to get into my pants," the girl bit out, wiping the blood from her face with the back of her hand. Her eyes were on fire with all the anger in her heart. Even an outsider who knew nothing of their relationship, like Sakura, could see how much the little girl hated her opponent.

"Don't think that's not still happening, you little punk." He stepped forward threateningly and a few men at the bar laughed. The boy with the machine eye glanced towards Sakura, frowning. That's when the girl seemed to notice her for the first time. A second later, the would be rapist saw her too, and it wasn't in the good way.

"Back up, little bird?" he sneered, jerking a chin out towards Sakura. One of the boys who was dressed like him who sat in the booth closest to the creep whistled, and other clapped approvingly.

"Save a piece for me," one whooped.

The girl on the ground cused, crawling towards Sakura. "Get out of here," she hissed.

No matter what had happened previously, or how sore Sakura had felt earlier, none of that mattered now because a sixteen year old girl who was about to be sexually assaulted just told her to run. Sakura felt inside the pockets of her jacket, already feeling a protective urge that was familiar. She didn't know what or who she was very well, but she knew she was pissed off and disgusted at the moment.

"What's your name?" Sakura asked the girl on the floor, who by now had managed to sit up.

The girl glared up at Sakura, her moon colored eyes less fierce than before. Her hair was long and black, but the ends looked like they had been cut at different intervals, because they were all uneven strands. Maybe that was intentional to look edgy. "Hanabi," the girl bit out.

"Shut up!" the creep cursed, making to kick at the younger girl.

Hanabi scooted away, rolling over herself so that she was closer to Sakura. She crawled the rest of the way, hiding behind the older girl's legs. The boys squeezed in at the booth all laughed together at her frightened expression. There was already a nasty looking bruise beginning to bloom beneath the skin of her cheek.

Sakura felt the crescent moon scabs on her palms pulse. Her memory was a mess, but she remembered what it felt like to burn with fury. No, this was righteous wrath, justified and holy. She reached inside the pockets of her jacket and pulled out the brass knuckles studded with green peridot gems where her thumb should rest. They felt so good in her hands, she crouched naturally. Even if she didn't know what she was doing, her body did.

The man opposite her had been grinning stupidly until she pulled out her weapons. The smirk was gone and now he looked genuinely insulted. How dare she try to fight back and defend herself. He cursed and said something else that didn't make sense to her as she elected to ignore anything else coming out of his mouth.

She must have ignored something important because he charged at her screaming with what looked like a billy club in his hand, raised up and ready to strike. Sakura felt the techno music in her bones as she ducked and pivoted, catching him in the side with her knuckles. She heard something crack and she struck again, relishing the sensation of power. His recovery was sloppy. He wasn't a skilled fighter at all. He was most likely one of those boys who never fought unless his boys were there to swarm and back him up. Speaking of which…

Sakura pistoned her fist down between his legs and the howl of pain was nearly loud enough to drown out the echoed hisses of all her observers. Every other male in the room winced or looked away as her opponent crumbled to the floor, holding himself between his legs. With him down, She grabbed the back of his jacket and the fabric of his pants before lifting him up, over her head, and tossing him onto the table where his friends had originally gathered. It broke apart and the males scattered like spiders under a light.

She shouldn't have, but Sakura suddenly felt homicidal. Not knowing what else to do with the rage in her veins she stalked closer to the boy who crawled away from the broken table and grabbed him by the neck. He flailed and she turned him over so her arm was around his neck and the other was on his thigh. She broke him over her knee and tossed him aside. She took another by the face, her fingers curling into his mouth and dragging him by the jaw. She dropped him and buried her fist into his chest, deep enough that his eyes rolled back and his body went limp. She was fast, too fast to catch.

One of the remaining males had made it to his feet and looked like he was about to rush her, but she pivoted to face him head on, crouched like a matador ready to take a bull by his horns. He hesitated, and she didn't let him think to regret it. She was there, first in his face, knocking him back into the limp body of one of his friends.

There were two males left who hadn't fallen under her fists yet, and the one with a broken back began to stir. The others would have to be carried out. There was no way they were leaving on their own. It was amazing how the few other patrons didn't lift a finger or even try to verbally stop her. The boy with the blond hair and the bionic eye just kept watching her, waiting to see how things played out.

One of the boys started to take a step towards her and Sakura raised her fist, causing the boy to flinch. She couldn't help the curl of her lips when she sneered at his display. "You should quit while you're ahead."

"Who the fuck are you?" his companion asked in a whine.

Sakura never answered. Outside there was noise and new neon lights began to flash. A handful of men in the place began getting up to leave out the back, some cursing. The sirens came next.

Sakura didn't know what she was supposed to do. She didn't know what was coming, and she didn't know what was making the people around her react all of a sudden. She had knocked three men on their asses and no one raised a finger, but now half were running.

"You don't want to stay here," the girl from before hissed.

Sakura turned to look and saw there was dried blood stuck to the side of her face. "You…" Sakura glanced out the windows of the front and saw more shadows step in front of the light. The girl was tugging on Sakura's arm and the boy with the bionic eye was still watching her, still smiling like what he saw was so entertaining. Sakura blinked hard, feeling dizzy again. Her memories were hazy. "You..who…?"

"I'll tell you later, my people will find us, but you have to come with me before the androids show up. They're almost never inside our city but they're still shit to deal with." The girl tugged on Sakura's arm harder. Sakura stumbled forward and with the new momentum, the younger girl was able to drag her out the bag the same way so many men from before had gone.

"Where are you taking me?" Sakura asked, still not so nimble on her feet. Her arm with the barcode throbbed like a fresh bruise, but it was easier to ignore when there was nothing she could do about it. "And…who…who are you?"

The anger made her strong, and without it, she was the girl who stumbled out of the trash pile from before. Her bones wanted to sing a lament for all the pain they endured within her body. There was the dull thrum of a heavy base coming from inside a club nearby and her pain pulsed with the same sad energy that hurt with every beat.

"My name's Hanabi," she said. Sakura noticed what the girl was wearing now was not too different from the style she saw on the streets earlier. It wasn't a lot, a tight miniskirt, ripped fishnets and a matching tank over her triangle bra. It was proactive for a girl so young. It didn't stand out so much because Hanabi was flat as a pancake and still too young for her curves, but it wasn't good for fighting. "I'm a part of the Harpies. They'll take you in too. You're like Temari."

"Harpies…?" Sakura wanted to shake her head. Hanabi was leading her through the kitchen of a Chinese restaurant and out a side exit into another alleyway. People ignored them as if the two girls were wind. For how badly her head throbbed Sakura thought they might as well be. "And who's Temari? You're not making any sense. And damn it….we're far away now you can stop it with the dragging and the running, we're fine!"

"No, my blood was at the scene. They'll look for me because I'm on a list if they ever bother to test it. Damn, it's rare they ever come into NewDestruction. They must be looking for someone or something else."

Sakura felt her heart pitch and her stomach clench. "You never told me what or who Temari was when I asked. Where are you taking me?"

Hanabi didn't answer, but pulled Sakura through another back room into another kitchen and out into another alleyway that led to the end of what looked like an unfinished highway turnpike. Sakura nearly took a knee down on the road, feeling a sudden wave of sickness as the openness made her head spin. Why were they out in the middle of an unfinished road where others could see them? Weren't they supposed to be acting low key to avoid detection.

Sakura's stomach pitched again. "I think I'm going to be sick," Sakura moaned, actually falling to her knees this time around. The barcode on her arm throbbed a bit too so she pushed down the sleeve of her jumpsuit to expose it. The skin around her barcode was red and inflamed. Hanabi sucked in a sharp breath from behind Sakura. The pink haired girl turned to glare at the younger girl.

"They're trying to track you without a tracer. You need to cut it out."

Sakura felt blurry and knew she looked sicker the closer her body slid to the ground. Yeah, she needed to get angry again to ignore this pain, but there was nothing around to make her heart burn like it had.

What was she doing?

Where was she going?

What was she supposed to be doing?

Sakura's head hurt. The asphalt underneath her began to turn a darker shade of black where the sweat from her face fell. Her mark throbbed and she wanted to scratch it away with her fingernails, but moving her arm felt like too much work. Where had all this pain come from?

Hanabi was crouched down beside Sakura, panicking about not knowing what to do when Sakura felt the lights. They were different from before. Purple headlights that streaked across the night crossed her vision. She saw red taillights and then purple headlights again. Red tail lights and then purple headlights, red taillights and then purple headlights, red taillights and then purple headlights….they were circling here.

The spinning stopped just as Sakura felt her eyes too heavy to keep open. She needed to drift away. Her head was such a mess that she couldn't hear the thunder of bike engines or the angry exchange between a handful of girls. Sakura felt the vibration underneath her face and opened her eyes just enough to see heavy boots inches from her face. She tried to look up and saw miles of leg, but couldn't turn enough to see where those legs went. Her head hurt too much to hear all of what they were saying.

"But you've done it in the past-"

"We were prepared for it then!"

"-I….you don't even know her name!"

"-saved me."

"We can't just….when the time is like this….bad guy."

Someone stomped their foot enough to shake the little bit of gravel in Sakura's vision and then someone hissed out a sullen, 'fine' in defeat. The boots came back and Sakura felt someone tugging at her arm. She saw shapes and colors blur together through the spaces between her eyelashes. She couldn't keep her eyes open and she couldn't stay awake any longer.

Her bones ached.

* * *

When the signal cut out Kabuto was livid.

He had been simmering all day with varying levels of agitation, but what little composure he had maintained up to that point broke when the signal went dead on his screen. Things had been shitty before, having to abandon one of his most precious accomplishments for the sake of mobility, sabotaging your own personal lab after death threats, coming out as a double crosser to one of the most dangerous men under the dome, all of that sucked. But he could deal with it. It wasn't great, but he could deal with it because he had something more important.

Or he did until she disappeared off the screen.

When his assistant Ukon walked into the room and saw half the furniture was overturned and a pair of jagged, fist sized holes in the wall, he had the good decency to stay on the threshold, never fully entering the room.

"Is that the Lamb Vulture experiment?" the assistant asked, his tone mellow and even, in spite of how shaken he really was.

Kabuto looked up from the mess he had made, both fists bleeding. His hair was an unkempt mess of silver around his face. Pushing his glasses up so that they caught the light and glared white for a flash, Kabuto regarded the new arrival with unmasked distain.

"What's it to you?"

'Orochimaru would like an update soon."

Kabuto nearly snarled, snapping into a wild animal at the thought of another person wanting to ask him about his pet project. Orochimaru had nothing to do with his excellence. Orochimaru played no part in the experiment so he could just suck it for all Kabuto cared. Sakura was Kabuto's problem and Kabuto's alone.

"I have nothing to report on the matter. You have no right to question me on this."

Uko, to his credit, stood his ground and never flinched. "When Orochimaru has to burn an entire base for you, he earns the right to ask questions. Questions like, what do you have to show for all this sacrifice?"

Kabuto snarled, looking away from the male. His eyes landed on the computer screen in front of him where heat signatures from all the registered citizens showed up as faint white dots. A minute ago there had been a red dot running around, but now there wasn't. He knew the tracker was good, he had minimal communication with it even, meaning Sakura had been close. There was no way it died out on its own. Someone had to mess with it.

"You can tell him there is no change in the situation. We're still trying to locate and apprehend the target."

"If you've lost the signal don't bother." Kabuto whipped around, his eyes wide and maniacal. "What did you say?"

"Orochimaru does not deem it worthy of the company's time or resources to recover an infertile experiment. While it was a semi successful genetic bonding experiment, there are more pressing matters that could benefit from your attention. Orochimaru deems the Lamb an acceptable loss."

"I'm not giving up, and he's crazy to think I would. I've worked too hard and to long to just give her up-" Kabuto snarled out the rest of his sentence, reaching for an already overturned chair to hurl at a far wall in rage. He seethed, veins bulging in his neck.

This was so not happening to him right now.

"There is the Uchiha matter to deal with. Report to the main conference room in four hours with your latest research. Orochimaru will be forgiving, considering you were just brought on from an old project, but please make an effort to keep up with the rest of us."

"Get the fuck out of my room."

Ukon swallowed. "Orochimaru may be willing to-"

"I said get out!"

Kabuto reached for the leg of a trolley cart and had lifted it up, preparing to swing it forward when Ukon slammed the door shut behind him. Even as Orochimaru's messenger, the boy knew when to call it quits and count his losses. Nothing more could be said to Kabuto now.

Left to himself, Kabuto dropped the troll cart on its side, letting the metal device clang loudly against the linoleum tile. A few instruments spilled out, but they weren't anything he couldn't replace. Kabuto didn't care what happened to his things anymore. They weren't important.

He reached out towards the touch screen with the map of the city feeding information updated by the second. There was nothing on this screen for him to see anymore so he dragged the page away, hiding it in the corner. There was an icon of a folder he clicked on instead, and inside that folder was a set of video files. A few were starred as the most important. He clicked on one, opening it.

The video loaded right away and he saw her, serene as the day he left her. She slept like her soul was in another world that left her body behind every night. Considering the tortures of his experiments, he almost believed that. She was so calm when she slept, no trace of rage left behind. He could watch her sleep for hours.

So he did.

* * *

Click

Hey, this world ain't real, is it? No. I didn't think so either. But it doesn't matter. Let's wake up again.

Click

* * *

Sakura drifted in and out of consciousness before finally awaking fully atop a pair of crates pushed together and draped with tarp. If her back hadn't been ready to kill her earlier, it sure as hell wanted to murder her now. A word ran across her memory as she looked around. Warehouse. That's where she was hiding out, in an old warehouse left abandoned when the rest of the city advanced into a more modern age.

"She's awake!"

"You idiot, she's just moving in her sleep again. She'll be out for a few more hours at the very least. Temari had to do a crap job with the-shit she is awake! Guys! Heeeeey!"

Sakura's head began to hurt just as much as her back. She started to roll over and felt the edge of the crates. One of arms dangled limply over the side and she saw it was bandaged with soiled wraps. Dried blood stained the area around her barcode. What had they done?

"Hey, can you move yet?"

"Idiot, she's moving now."

"No, she's just twitching."

"Oh for the love of-here."

Sakura felt arms around her and nearly cried out when she was lifted up into a sitting position. She whimpered at the shift in gravity on her body. Her back wanted to kill her. Someone had taken her jacket away and the back part of her jumpsuit was unzipped. She could feel the air on her skin between her shoulder blades. She cursed under her breath, hissing the words out between clenched teeth. Behind her she heard more insults being tossed around.

She was going to be fine. Sakura squeezed her eyes shut and imagined all the pain in her body being raked into a pile at the center of her being. She gathered her pain into one clump and then began to squeeze it away. She imagined it crumbling away, of it turning red and burning down till it was nothing but dust between her hands. When she opened her eyes again her body was still in pain, but she was finally above it. She hurt but that pain no longer owned her or restricted her so severely.

"Where am I?" she coughed out. Her voice was rough and her throat sore, making her words sound like sandpaper on a chalkboard. She looked around, noticing how things were still blurry from the pounding in her head. "Who are you guys?"

"Well, we're not guys, first of all," one of the girls around her started to say. Sakura recognized the voice. It belonged to the girl from yesterday, Hanabi.

"The brat means to say, we're the Harpies," a new voice but in.

Sakura looked up and saw a cute girl with brown hair and matching eyes staring down at her. The girl's hair was tied up into two buns that were tied back with spiked hairbands. Her lips were a bright fuchsia color to match her boy shorts. Instead of a bra or something super scandalous her top was a navy long sleeve decorated with cartoonish yellow stars. She was wearing thick combat boots that folded down over her ankles and black, thigh high tights.

The girl smiled before pointing to herself. "I'm Tenten by the way."

A third girl stepped up out of the shadows. Her hair was long enough to curl below her kneecaps. She stood with arms crossed underneath her breasts in tank top and legging set. She seemed apathetic to the whole exchange, looking at Sakura with partly hooded eyes. "Ah, and I'm Kin."

Tenten giggled before sitting down next to Sakura. "And then there is Temari, but she's not here right now. She and Hana are running errands. No one expected you to wake up so early. You're a real trooper." Something went off inside of Tenten's head and she snapped her fingers real wick, like she just had an idea. "Oh, and I almost forgot, there's Hinata, Hanabi's cousin. She's one of us, but she's like…our station mother. She doesn't ride with us anymore. It got to be too much for her. But you'll meet her eventually. You're one of us so we have to introduce you to the whole family."

"Why does my body hurt so bad, and what did you guys do to me?" Sakura asked, reaching to pick up her limp arm with her opposite hand. It sent lightning up to her elbow just to move it. She wanted to tug off the bandage but didn't dare, not knowing what was underneath anymore.

"Ah…" Tenten looked to Hanabi and then to Kin, both of whom shook their heads and looked away, not daring to touch on that subject. "Um…." Tenten chuckled nervously. "Well, you had a tracker in your arm, and while that's something all citizens have, your's was implanted illegally like when they do genetic experiments, which are also illegal now, thank you Parliament. Temari ripped it out, but you still have the barcode surface tattoo. You can scan it for data on yourself, and at access hubs, but the other part thats underneath your skin…that's gone."

Sakura closed her eyes again and imagined herself squeezing the pain down and away. She was above it, she was above it, she wouldn't let it rule her. "Why did you have to take it out? I feel like you ripped half my arm out with it."

"The wiring was pretty extensive, but it was the same model they used on all of us, which makes us think you came from the same lab. Lucky for you Temari knew how to take it out." Tenten paused for a moment, watching Sakura for the smaller girl's reaction. A beat latter she added, "Do you know anything about yourself?"

Sakura tried. She made an effort to reach back into her memories and see anything from before the alleyway where she woke up. "My name…is Sakura Haruno. I don't know….where I came from, I woke up in a trash heap and that's the last thing I remember. Before that it's all….white." Sakura jerked with a new memory. "But I was able to use one of those boxes to scan myself. I read somethings. There was a bird, something about a lamb and a vulture. I can't remember much else, but you said I could scan myself again, right."

"It's not a good idea," Kin added in before Tenten could say anything. "While they are no longer able to track you all the time, if you scan yourself they get an alert to your location and can dispatch android goons to pick you up. Don't do that again unless you want to get caught."

Hanabi made a thoughtful sound. "Ah, that's why the Android police came to bust us. They weren't looking for me, or trying to keep the peace, they were tracking you."

"But who are they working for, who would want to….to track and find me like that?" Sakura asked.

Tenten waved a hand in front of her face before replying. "Doesn't matter much. Genetic scientists are a dime a dozen these days. None of them are worth their spit save for the Oto corp, that's where we escaped from. Peeps like Oto abduct kids no one will miss and experiment on them. Most don't survive. Did it say what dome you came from in your file?"

Sakura tried to remember the words from the screen, but she couldn't remember clearly enough to know if it mentioned anything about a dome she came from, or where they picked her up, so she shook her head. "I can't remember."

"It doesn't matter," Kin sighed, turning her face away so that half was dark with shadow. "You can't go back, and if they went through a full cycle of experiments on you, that means years in a lab. Whatever home you had is likely gone by now, family too, if they didn't sell you first, that is."

"Wow, way to be harsh," Hanabi mocked. Kin sneered at the younger girl before pushing off the wall and stalking off. She made a gesture with her hand and Hanabi returned in kind. Turning back towards Sakura Hanabi's scowl faded. "Sorry for her. You shouldn't have to hear that. Kin went looking for her family and didn't like what she found, so she takes it out on everyone else."

Family. The word rang hollow in her ears like it didn't mean anything to her. It didn't hurt to think of missing them or never seeing them again. Did that mean she didn't have a family to go back to? Either way, she waved Hanabi's apology off. "It's fine. I'm okay with it. I don't think family meant anything to me anyway so…yeah."

Tenten tapped Sakura's shoulder, earning the green eyed girl's attention. "Do you think you could try walking now? I know you're probably sore because your body is used to being used for experiments and shit, but its good to move past that and work out all the aches. Otherwise you should go back to sleep."

Sakura wanted to move again. She wanted to press herself and push herself to her limits and then go past them just a little bit. She stirred a bit and remembered what pain was. Her control slipped and she was subjugated once again before she straightened back out and closed her eyes. "No offense, Tenten, but this bed was worse than body experiments. I think my back might still kill me at this rate."

Tenten winced, looking sorry. "That's not because of the boxes, they cut bones out of your back and the stubs want to grow back. We all had them too, but like, mine were burned down to the pits so there's no chance of regrowth."

Sakura wanted to gag. "Bones?"

But before she could ask anything more she heard the roar of twin engines coming in downstairs. All three girls looked to the far of the room where the loft opened up to the landing down below. Sakura was sitting so she couldn't see what was going on below them, but it appeared neither Tenten or Hanabi needed to see to know what was happening.

"They're back," Hanabi chipped. She looked to Sakura with wide eyes, clearly excited about the sounds down below. "It's Temari and Hanna. They'll be able to tell you more and help you through the transition better than any of us."

Tenten coughed loudly and Hanabi just rolled her eyes. A few seconds later they heard the footsteps and a pair of young women came up the stairs from down below, carrying the jackets shrugged from their backs. There was a blond and a brunette, both dressed provocatively with edgy fashion and make up that read like warpaint on their faces.

"Temari is the blond one," Hanabi whispered before skipping over to greet the pair.

Temari had sharp teal eyes rimmed in purple and honeysuckle blond hair pulled back into four consecutive ponytails. She wore a choke collar studded with spikes that matched the bedazzled studs on her push up bra. Her shorts were high waisted and underneath she wore fishnet stockings ripped and dirtied with age. On her finger she dragged behind her a denim vest to match her shorts and on the back Sakura read the words, Harpy Bitch . Underneath was a design or a drawing Sakura couldn't make out because it was wrinkled.

Hana kept her denim vest on, it matched her hip hugger shorts, showing just a thin band of flesh above the waist when she moved. Her boots were knee highs with spikes on the knees. Her hair was pulled back into a low ponytail with a few short strands hanging around her face. She had two, red inverted triangles tattooed onto her face, one on each cheek under her eyes. She wore her eyeliner heavy.

"You're awake," Temari spoke first.

"You're the one they said took the tracker out of my arm. Did you know what it was doing to me."

Temari eyed Sakura wearily before replying, sizing the younger girl up. "I had a good enough idea. Hanabi said you were a bad ass with your fists but you look like a sick dog to me."

"I'm not feeling top of my game just yet," Sakura laughed, feeling the need to be sarcastic and biting.

Temari was powerful, and she carried herself like a leader. When she walked into the room, people watched. From beside her, Sakura knew Tenten was staring at the blond girl in near awe. Even Hanabi looked a little starry eyed.

Temari rolled her shoulders and that's when Sakura saw it. She thought she had imagined it, but the sandy black colors behind Temari's head weren't just a trick of the light. Unfurling, a pair of vulture sized wings began to stretch out from behind the sandy blond girl. From beside her, Hana shrugged, keeping her vest on, but Sakura saw the loose feathers fall from underneath.

Extra bones.

"You were the same experiment as me," Sakura breathed, reaching up to try and feel her back for the stubs of wings that weren't there anymore, but Tenten caught her hand and shook her head. Sakura felt a pinch in her chest. "What happened to my back?"

"When they dumped you they filed down your wings, but at least they didn't finish the job. Yours will grow back," Tamari said, stretching her wings absently. They were glorious and Sakura felt deep envy all of a sudden. "It'll just take a while, and it will be painful."

Sakura didn't doubt that.

"Are you the only two with wings out of the girls?" Sakura asked.

"Temari nodded, tossing her vest onto a nearby stack of crates. "Hanabi has baby wings, they're deformed suckers she keeps folded up, but yeah, just us for the most part. If yours come in the whole way I'll help you deal with them. Hanabi said you saved her and you're practically cut from our genetic hybrid mold, so it didn't take a lot of convincing to decide take you into our fold." Temari pointed to herself. "I'm Temari."

Hana lifted her own hand, palm face up. "Hana."

Temari nodded approvingly. It was easy to see who was king and leader of their group. When Temari turned her eyes on Sakura she felt conflict in her bones. A part of her wanted to submit and be grateful for all the help they've extended, but another part of her wanted to fight again. There was a sliver of her that wanted to rule and hated the idea of dominance. Sakura squashed that part of her down alongside the pain. She would become adept at mastering herself and filtering her emotions.

If Temari suspected anything of Sakura's struggle she didn't let on, waving towards Ami over her shoulder. "And you already know the other girls. Sorry we weren't here when you woke up. You should probably rest some more. Get some sleep and next time we'll show you around and get you set up with some new threads and a set of wheels. We all bike here, it's safest and easiest for getting around." Temari grinned and it came out looking impish. "You'll learn fast."

Sakura remembered the purple and red lights.

"When will my memories come back?" the question surprised even Sakura. She hadn't been thinking of it, but now that the words were out of her mouth she realized she wanted to know what she had forgotten. It made sense to want such a thing.

Hana glanced between Temari and Sakura, frowning. Hanabi fidgeted behind the girls.

"It's normal to experience memory loss as a side effect of the experimentation," Temari began to say. She let her words settle before speaking again. "But most of us never recover those memories. It's better to just move on and make new ones. Forget your family like they forgot you."

Sakura shook her head sharply. "No, it's not my family…it's, I had something to do, there was something important I was supposed to be doing, looking for or…something. I can't remember what it is, but I know there is something I'm supposed to be doing, something important." A job? A mission? What was it?

"You may remember, in time," Hana offered, stepping up beside Temari. "But it won't come to you if you try to force the memory or agonize over it. Best advice we could give you is to move on with your life and pray you get lucky, but don't die on that hope." Hana's eyes were harder than Temari's. "Most of us never regained more than a few faces or names."

Temari whispered something chastising at Hana, but the taller brunette didn't flinch or even react to whatever the blond said. Sakura wanted to ask more but felt Hanabi tug on her arm. The younger girl was looking towards the ladder that led down below. She turned to Sakura. "We should move before you fall asleep again. We couldn't move you far the first time, but this is scary close to where you were last traced. You'll be more comfortable at our hideaway."

"Also, you stand out in that sort of outfit. You'll need to learn to blend in," Temari laughed, walking around Hana to stand behind the crates Sakura and Hanabi were sitting on.

Without warning, Temari reached down and zipped up the rest of Sakura's suit and that's when she felt the lumps under her shoulder blades, pressing out the back, wanting to stem out. They were sensitive still, the way baby bones usually are.

"It hurts."

"And it's going to until they grow in a bit more. Get used to it now." They were the words Sakura said to herself, but when Temari said them, something in the younger girl wanted to snap and turn on the blond. A darker part of her-the part that didn't want to be ruled- wanted to snap her neck and Sakura shivered with the horror.

Temari noticed this time and nodded grimly. "No one will blame you. That's what they did to us. We're monsters. A part of us will always want to kill, especially when its someone of the same sex." Temari leaned back a little, her voice softer. "Hinata makes a drug for us, helps keep the chemicals balanced."

Sakura didn't want to take another drug, didn't want to put anything more into her body or mess with it any more than it already was, but she couldn't say she was fine. It would be a lie to say anything, so she turned her face away and nodded, pretending it didn't mean anything.

Temari squeezed her shoulder encouragingly, and Sakura wondered if this was a test, because the flare sparked in her heart, but she squashed it down. She was in control. She wouldn't let her blood lust rule her. No one would rule her, not even the urges they put inside of her.

"Can you ride behind one of us or are you going to fall asleep?" Temari asked.

Sakura didn't curl her lips when she answered, though the temptation was there. "I will not sleep until it is safe again." She looked up through the mess of her bangs, glaring through strands of pink. "I guarantee it."

* * *

Temari was right. It took days for Sakura's body to recover, and part of the reason for that was because of how bull headed she was about recovery. Hanabi told her to rest, gave her a nice bed and brought her food, but Sakura insisted on walking and moving and helping out wherever she could. Tenten came in to check on her often enough too, but Sakura rarely saw the other three girls, and still hadn't met Hinata. Apparently the girl was super shy and didn't come out of her residence for weeks at a time.

The Harpies lived above a club in the ghetto part of NewDestruction where only the fit and fierce dared to even venture. Apparently the dome city had been called Peridot a long time ago, before the uprising and the anarchy sweep turned over the stable government. It was a messy history lesson, but the end result was a world teetering on chaos and crime with powerful monsters dressed like men rising up to take control. Gangs were rampant.

Things like genetic experimentation and child abductions were highly illegal, but the new Parliament had no power to enforce their laws inside the more wild domes like Peridot. There were multiple domes, and some were nice with functioning bodies of government and a respectable police force, like Tourmaline. Others were left to their destruction and completely abandoned, like Bornite or Stibnite, now known as EndofWorld and RedHell respectively. NewDestruction was dangerously close to becoming an abandoned dome, but the city was too large with too many citizens to let go of completely when there were gangs perfectly capable of running things.

'It's like living in a war,' Hanabi admitted after explaining as best she could.

Immigration to a more stable dome was difficult, nearly impossible, especially for the wrong kind of people. Sakura would never be the right kind of person for a stable life.

The building the Harpies commandeered had suffered some major damage way back in the day, and so no one dared visit the fourth or fifth floor on account of how open and exposed they were to the elements. Someone had built a makeshift ramp right through the fourth floor, destroying part of the fifth, so that the track could branch out and connect with the main ramps throughout the city. It was noisy when they used in for races, which wasn't often, but still… Building a club in the basement wasn't a stellar idea, but with all that angry music no one ever noticed the noise of angry engines.

Sakura stayed cooped up on the sixth floor, not daring to come down for anything other than helping Hanabi or learning how to ride a bike. Riding was one of the few things Sakura found herself enjoying. She loved the speed and the wind and the danger and knew she was meant for riding. A part of her imagined herself flying over the asphalt instead of cruising on a metal machine.

Noticing her potential, Tenten offered to help modify Sakura's bike. Sakura wanted to say no, they had already helped her with so much and she felt so in debt to them, but the speed was something she craved.

"A speed demon, huh?"

Sakura looked up over her bike to see Temari standing with a hand on her hip and the other in the air, clutching something. The girl had something gold between her fingers that she was rolling back and forth over her knuckles before pocketing.

Tenten looked up from her design papers. "What is it, Temari?" she asked, knowing their leader wasn't visiting for a good will call.

The blond pocketed her gold item. "You're working on supercharging this bike. Is it for races?"

Tenten glanced at Sakura before the pink haired girl sat up to speak. "Not in particular. I just really like riding. I wanted to push my limits."

"And you feel healthy enough to push those limits?"

Sakura nodded easily. "The pain isn't something that I give a thought to anymore."

"That's good, because there's something I want to ask you for. Are you willing to do me a favor?"

Sakura preened for the opportunity to pay back her debt and be free of the guilt nesting in her chest. "What is it?"

"Hanabi said you were a sick fighter. One of the ways we make money around here is with racing and entertainment. There's a club that holds no hold brawl battles for cash and credit. Would you be willing to help earn our dinner?"

Sakura appreciated how it was phrased like a question, even though they both knew it wasn't. Sakura was a Harpy now, she had to start pulling her own weight. "Tell me when and where."

Tenten stood up suddenly and Temari laughed. "Don't be too eager. There's a brawl tonight, but it's not worth much. If you want to rest and wait-"

"I'm fine now."

"Sakura." Tenten took a step closer to her friend. "Wait a sec and see what you're getting into. You don't know what kind of fight it might be and you don't know how good of a fighter you really are. You were running on instinct last time."

"I am nothing but instinct, so how is that a problem," Sakura groaned, remembering the way her body moved without her mind in the last fight. She had been a fighter at one point or another. She was fit for one too, even with the lack of food she was able to keep down these past few days.

"Then maybe tonight is a better idea. It's at Konan's place. She'll set up something favorable for us." Temari looked to Sakura, lowering her voice. "Konan used to be a Harpy before splitting to do her own thing, but we're on good terms. She has a boy toy now and it's what's best for her, honestly."

Sakura made a face that caused Tenten to snicker. Temari shook her head at her friend's snide reaction. "The competitive urges seemed to dissipate once a harpy mates or bonds to a male, like we're all in competition for dick and we can't settle down until we get some. It's a part of being a monster. They wanted to be able to breed us for stronger offspring and hell if we're not traumatized enough already."

Sakura shivered at the thought of having to mate with a male inside a lab with people watching and recording her every move. It was almost enough to make her gag, so she quickly dismissed the thought. "What about the fight? Can you tell me more about it?"

"One cage, two go in, one walks out. Three partners and you're at the top. No deaths. Also, no weapons until a time limit is reached inside the cage. It's pretty basic, you'll hear more about it once you show up." Temari waved to Sakura's bike. "We should leave in a few hours to get there before open entry. Will you have this ready in time?"

Tenten and Sakura shared a look before the brunet nodded. "I can have it put back together in half an hour. But if Sakura wins, she should have some of that money to go towards her own bike restoration. It would be better if we had a strong fuel tank so that her bike could take nitrate pills for racing in the future."

Temari hummed, reaching into her breast pocket and pulling out the gold object from earlier. It looked like a fat yellow pill that shimmered in the right sort of light. "That would be a good idea, but these babies are hella expensive. Where are you going to get the money to buy these?"

It was Tenten's turn to laugh. "I know a guy." She flashed Sakura a wide smile. "Leave it to me. Just worry about winning your fights."

Sakura wasn't sure what a nitrate pill would do, but she could guess as much. If it was for speed than she wanted one. The first step to freedom was victory. When she nodded at Tenten it was enough to make the taller girl grin.

Temari started to turn away. "We'll ride out in two hours. Be ready before then."

Absently, Sakura wiped her hands down with a damp cloth. She looked up when she heard Tenten approach. "Hey," Sakura called out. "How do you do it. You never seem to get territorial or crazy around Temari. I mean…I've seen the tension between her and Hana, but you don't take the drugs."

Tenten wrinkled her nose in disgust. "Those things are disgusting. I tried em once, never again."

"So how do you not get nasty urges?"

Tenten laughed and it was a deep chuckle. "Oh, baby, you gotta trust me. I get plenty of nasty urges, but they're usually of the variety of wanting to take a girl on every piece of furniture in the room." Noticing Sakura's look Tenten winked. "Let me know if you're interested, kay?"

* * *

Konan was used to other members of the Akatsuki showing up unannounced in her establishment for no reason at all. While these visits were typically painless, Konan never did anything to encourage them. So when Sasori and Deidara showed up the night before their own tournament, she set aside a viewing room upstairs for them and left them alone. Sasori was cordial, silently thanking her with a nod, but Deidara had to open his mouth and make small talk.

"We're actually looking for someone tonight," Deidara said, smiling widely from his seat on the mesh couch that looked less comfortable than it actually was.

Konan wanted to leave, but she knew that proper manners demanded she stay. If this was Akatsuki business she needed to hear the blond out. "Do you have identification?"

Deidara tapped the side of his optic device. "I took a video of her fight. I've already sent it to you so you can see it when you have a free sec, but she's an enhanced like us, so it seems likely she would show up at a place like this, right?"

"What did the others say about this?" Konan asked, pulling out her phone and expanding the projected screen to accommodate the video she had been sent earlier that day. When Deidara didn't answer her question right away she looked up and narrowed her eyes. "Deidara…" Her tone was hard. "What do the others know of this?"

"They don't," Sasori hissed, butting in for the first time with a look of agitation. "This was supposed to be a private matter of mine that turned complicated. Deidara is aiding me in his free time." He turned to look at Konan in the eye, as was polite. "This is not officially scantiness business, so you don't have to help."

"What is this about?" she asked, fast forwarding the video until things started getting violent. When the girl started fighting, she paused and enlarged, getting a decent look at the face before letting the rest of the video play out. The fighting style was easier to recognize than the face.

"Remember that deal with Kabuto that went bad?" Deidara asked, sounding too happy for the subject they were discussing.

Konan curled her lip. She remembered only after it came to light that Sasori had commissioned Oto for a genetically compatible 'companion' to act as a squire of sorts. He fought with androids, that was where his brilliance set him apart from other gifted individuals, but he had started to notice a deterioration in social skills and wanted someone he could have as a side kick. That was how he phrased it to the others when this all came to light, but Konan suspected there were elements he left out.

Whatever the reason, Oto double crossed them, and the two frosty affiliates suddenly became hardened enemies overnight, which was fine with Konan. Long ago she had been an experiment from Oto that escaped with another group of runaways. Akatsuki and Oto had always been on bad terms, her history being one of the reasons, but they kept out of each others ways until now.

"I'm not inclined to offer you my support in locating this girl. What are you going to do when you find her."

"She'll be lost and alone," Sasori said, closing his eyes in annoyance. "We can take her in, make her one of us, the same as what we did with you."

Kona felt her frown deepen. "I came to Akatsuki of my own volition. I made a choice. What if she's already made a choice to live elsewhere with family or friends."

Sasori shook his head. "Kabuto said she was a non native. She wasn't born inside any of the domes. With the memory loss they left her with, she'll have no family or friends."

Konan didn't know if she was more annoyed with Sasori or stunned with the information. It would be rude to show annoyance, so she settled with stunned. "Sasori, there are no more non natives outside the domes, the air is toxic. No one can live out there."

"I'm not saying I know how Kabuto found her, but that is what he said. I was clear about my feelings towards abductions. He told me she volunteered in order to get inside the city."

"That sounds like a story," Konan hummed, suspecting Kabuto's claim to be fake. If Sasori believed it, he was deluding himself. She turned the video off, having seen enough and pocketed her phone. "I'll keep my own eyes open, but I haven't decided what I should do if I find her. I don't approve of your choices in a great many things, but that has never been relevant to our shared goals. However, if you should take action against her free will, that is something I will take up with Nageto."

"I have no plans to violate the child or impose my will upon her," Sasori snarled, looking away. "I'm not a monster."

Konan waited a beat, taking in the view of her two compatriots before responding. "We're all monsters, Sasori. Some of us just choose to admit it."

Deidara snickered behind her when she turned to leave them to their privacy. Sasori looked legitimately stricken with agitation or maybe that was just how his face looked after having to spend so much time with blond pyromaniac. It was understandable to want companionship that was pleasant when all you had was Deidara, but that didn't justify his means of obtaining such a thing.

Konan skipped her office and went all the way down to the waiting rooms for her fighters. She found the room reserved for Temari and walked in without knocking, making sure to shut the door behind her. She masked the surprise she felt when she noticed Temari's companion.

Konan suspected as much when she heard about the new Harpy and was nearly convinced when she saw Hanabi in the video Deidara sent her. Sure enough, the girl named Sakura was the same one Sasori was hunting for. That left Konan with a decision to make.

"Is that what she's wearing into the ring?" Konan asked, nodding towards Sakura. Sakura was wearing an all black body suit that came up to her neck and connected with the fingerless gloves Hanabi leant her. Like Temari, she wore black boots instead of heels. It was considerably less flashy and more modest than what the Harpy girls were known for, but no one pressured Sakura to change anything.

"Something wrong with it?" Temari asked, ready to defend Sakura's choices.

Konan was used to Temari's sharp way of speaking. "There are men here looking for you. They're not from Oto, and I believe them when they say they're willing to respect your autonomy, but they want to recruit you into Akatsuki."

"Why?" Temari hissed, standing erect. "How would they know already? She hasn't even fought."

"Deidara was there in the club when Sakura defended Hanabi. I have a video of it. It's up to you what you want to do with that information. But if it's something you want, I have extra clothing you could use to hide your hair, like under a hood. Otherwise they'll recognize you right away."

"What's so terrible about talking to them?" Sakura asked, speaking up for the first time. She nodded her chin in Konan's direction. "You're a member, aren't you?"

"Yes. I hold minor leadership among their ranks."

"Can you vouch for their honesty? If they say they're not going to force me to do anything and just talk, do they mean it?"

Konan paused for a moment before nodding. "I believe so. If one member were to potentially go back on his word, the rest of us would hold him accountable. We pride ourself on this image."

Sakura regarded Konan anew, leaning back on the bench. "What about you, personally?" Sakura tilted her head to the side and it was enough to make her overgrown bangs catch in her to long eyelashes. "If they tried to force me to do something I didn't like, or blackmailed my friends, what would you do."

Konan wondered how damaged the girl would be when she heard the child came with zero memories and a shoddy wing filing job. Sakura was not what Konan would have expect of Sasori's pet project. Konan expected someone a little more damaged, she realized. Sakura was sharp and she was distrusting, and these were healthy traits to have in a world as twisted as NewDestruction.

Her words came out sounding measured when she eventually spoke. "You're in my house under my protection. If they act against you in such a way, you have my protection."

Sakura nodded once. "Then I don't need a hood. I'm not going to start my life off by hiding. If Oto wants me back they can try and take me." Her arms shook a bit so she folded her hands together. "I'll be ready for them."

Konan decided she liked Sakura.

"I'm going to sit with the others then. When you're done with your fights you can meet us in one of my VIP rooms. They'll greet you on your terms. Don't forget that."

"I thought the winner got his own room for the night," Sakura called back with a playful head tilt.

Konan raised a single brow. "Your confidence is commendable, but there are other enhanced fighting tonight. You're hardly the best pick."

Sakura's eyes danced with electric mirth. "I always loved the story of an underdog."

Yes, Konan decided she liked the new girl very much. If she decided to take up some part time work with the Akatsuki it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world.

The first fight was already underway when she rejoined Deidara and Sasori. Neither male was expecting her return, but she wanted to be in the room when they saw Sakura for the first time. If they were curious about her presence they didn't mention it. Deidara, however, didn't exclude her from his lidless chatter in Sasori's ear.

Just when Konan was about to quit the boy and track down a migraine reducer, the last match for the first round came up. Sakura's number flashed across an overhead screen before she stepped out of the small alcove meant for waiting fighters. Her opponent emerged on the opposite side.

"Is that…?" Deidara sounded stunned for once.

Sasori said nothing, but he was leaning forward in his seat, straining to see all that he could.

Konan felt her fingers twitch with the need to craft the white paper cranes that reminded her of the wings stripped from her. She pushed that anxiety down and schooled her features into a mask of indifference. "If she wins she's willing to meet with you in one of the VIP rooms. Don't push your luck or else I'll throw you both out now."

"You met her already and you didn't tell us?" Deidara asked, turning around sharply in his seat. He cursed and then turned his face back to the fight below, pulling back his hair so that his bionic eye could capture everything. "That's sly, Konan."

"Watch your words Deidara. I didn't have to let her fight. I didn't have to let you in. I didn't have to broker her meeting for you. Show your thanks or get out, but don't complain to me," Konan said, sitting in her seat like an empress. Deidara didn't respond, but Konan caught the shape of his lips curled into a pout and knew she had done right. "Now, let's see if she's worth her plumage."

Her first fight had been a breeze, but the second left her feeling her bruises. Neither opponent had taken her seriously, and that had helped her flow through the fights, one well aimed punch after another. She was fast and she was angry. They were limp and cold.

Sakura stood on the edge of the ring, waiting for the last contender to come out and square off against her. He was taller than the others, but not thicker. There were tattoos that shimmered under the dim lights leftover from his enhancements. He was well built, but Sakura suspected he was faster than he was stronger. There was a sharp gleam to his eyes and Sakura tense. This one was smart as well, which was worse than being fast. He wouldn't overestimate her like the others had.

"Ready for round three?" the cute pixy sized ref asked from her spot on the edge of the cage. Before either could affirm or deny the ref giggled and pulled out her whistle to blow.

He was on her like a streak of lightning. She felt his arms around her and had to contort faster than ever to avoid a death lock. She kicked at his kneecaps and one bent, but held up. She had to spin out of his rang before she could hope to land another blow. She was stronger than her size suggested, but this guy was sturdier than she suspected.

Bigger.

Faster.

Stronger.

She wanted to bite his throat out.

He came at her again, fast as before. She dodged, but he tripped her up with a foot curved behind her ankle. She pitched just enough to lose her balance. She didn't fall, but that's not what he wanted. His fist buried deep into her stomach and she slammed back into the wall. He didn't let up, one right after the other she took fist over fist till she thought she was going to rip apart in the middle.

In the back of her mind she wondered if she ever had periods this painful before. A part of her thought she had.

It was hard to catch herself, but she slammed her heel down onto his foot, it was enough to get him to hesitate, though not to stop. She didn't need him to stop. A moment was all she needed. Feeling like she was held together by threads, Sakura thumbed at his eyes and then slammed the flat of her forehead into his nose. He recoiled, clutching at the blood running down his face from his nose. It wouldn't be enough to bring him down, not by a long shot, but it was a start.

Sakura had fists made for destruction, and even without the silver knuckles, she was dangerous. She shot low then high, then low again, spinning so her heel caught his jaw and sent him reeling. Her elbows dug into him, one right after the other. She screamed with every blow, and there was more blood on her arms as another tooth fell from his mouth. He clawed at her and she felt the pain, but didn't let up. She was a monster, and he had no idea what he was doing with her.

"Damn bitch," she heard him curse.

Sakura didn't know what she looked like, but she liked to believe she was something worth having nightmares about when her teeth found his ear and ripped. A good chunk came away for her to spit across the room. He grabbed for her chest, trying to pull on her breasts to distract her and create an opening, but her binder kept her smooth and his hand found no purchase. He reeled and the heel of his hand struck her face, sending her back. She spun and fell against the cage wall. She was bleeding from her nose as well, and her eyes were going fuzzy on her again. She didn't need great vision for a fight, but this would give her a headache later on.

"Time to end this," Sakura said out loud, not knowing who would hear.

She grabbed at the cage wall and pulled herself up. He was coming towards her again. With her new height she reached out and kicked like a horse or mule. He was stumbling back so she dropped down and started to sprint after him. Close enough, she leapt into the air with her fist raised high, and brought it down hard.

He didn't get up again.

Sakura heard her name being mentioned and nearly sagged to her knees. The adrenaline was leaving her body and the less amp she felt the more her bruises cried out. She still felt ready to fall apart at her middle. She was going to be useless tomorrow night like this.

"How are you feeling?" Temari asked from the side of the cage where a door was opening up. Sakura groaned in reply, sounding as well as she felt. Temari winced. "That bad huh?"

"I need a new stomach."

"You'll find your bruises gone in a day, if it takes that long. We all have super regeneration rates, and yours is crazy fast to have recovered from my removal of your tracker like you did. If you walk it off you should be fine."

Sakura shut her eyes and felt her way out of the cage. Temari grabbed her arm and led her back down to the locker rooms to change out of her bloodied and ripped things. Sakura hissed when her blond friend peeled the skin tight fabric from her abdomen. Underneath, her skin was already an ugly shade of blue and purple. She was a nebula of wounds.

Throwing the old things away, Sakura padded over to a bin of recycled clothing and picked out new things to don. She found some high waisted fuchsia colored shorts and a dark gray hoodie with the arms torn off. At least her boots were something she could keep.

"See why we wear so little now. Less to replace."

Sakura rolled her eyes. "That's not the main reason, I'm sure."

Temari huffed. "What is that supposed to mean?"

Sakura hummed something, pulling the hood up as far as it would go and pretending she could sink into an leave this world behind. She was sore and tired and her back hurt again. She wanted to sleep and never wake up, but sleeping was terrible these days. She never felt rested after a night asleep.

"Come on," Temari finally said, looking at her nails. "Konan called us up to VIP room 24. The dudes wanting to meet you are there. If I recognize them I'll let you know."

"I wanna sleep."

"You signed up for this, hoe, so deal with it."

Sakura wanted to bit her, and felt her teeth ache a little bit. She had fangs, tiny ones, and they were still stained with blood in between their cracks from when she ripped off that dude's ear. Yuuum.

Second floor, the fourth room on the right, Sakura and Temari stopped outside of it. Temari knocked while Sakura busied herself with the dried blood on her face she hadn't wiped off yet. Her hands were dirty, so they did little good. She had the heel of her palm under her nose when Konan opened the door. Sakura drew her hand back and cursed a little. She looked a mess.

There were two males in the room, both of whom stood once the door opened. The first one Sakura recognized from the club she rescued Hanabi from. He had been the blond boy at the bar watching them with his stupid robot bionic eye thing. Knowing who he was now, Sakura looked him over again in an effort to commit his details to memory.

His hair was long, longer than hers with the texture of silk. He had a large strip of it pulled down in front of the side of his face with the fake eye, and another portion of it tied up in a clip. The side opposite his fake eye was shaved and Sakura saw that in his ear he had around seven metal piercings. His eye was lined with black liner, making the blue of his iris stand out all the more. He was dressed in skinny jeans and a mesh tank that showed off the tattoos on his chest.

Behind him stood a man with red hair left a mess atop his head. His skin was pale enough to see the bags under his eyes from lack of sleep. She caught him staring at her, seeing her form reflected in his amber colored eyes. He was dressed in a simple black coat with a high collar, rumpled black pants tucked into combat bots, and fingerless gloves. He tugged on the edges of his sleeves, still watching her.

The blond smiled wide, elbowing his friend in the ribs. "See, I told you she'd come. Aren't you glad I was right?"

"Deidara," Konan warned. The blond quieted down, but didn't stop smiling.

The redhead took a step forward, touching his chest. "My name is Sasori. The obnoxious blond is Deidara, you may elect to ignore him as I do."

Sakura glanced at Temari and the blond girl nodded. So Temari recognized these two. Good.

"I think you know who I am, but my name's Sakura, all the same." She didn't offer her hand to shake, the greeting was tentative. "Konan said you had something you wanted to talk to me about, but I'm sort of tired so I'd appreciate if we could be brief."

Sasori didn't react to her dismissive tone. He didn't seem like the time to react to most things. If Sakura had to peg him as something, She's guess him to be the quiet, manipulating one. "Of course. We saw your fight. The reason for our visit is to formally extend an invitation for membership to the Akatsuki because of your prowess. Our organization is dedicated to maintaining order and stability in NewDestruction withe the end goal of peace."

"I've hear a little bit about you," Sakura admitted, thinking back to what Temari had shared with Sakura in the locker room before her fight. Sakura had heard Akatsuki mentioned even before that, when Tenten talked about the gangs that rules their dome city, but never in such detail. Sakura knew Akatsuki was a big deal. It didn't make sense for them to want her to be a part of their group.

Sakura felt her fingers itch to clean her face. "Why would you want me?" She rubbed her jaw real quick before continuing as if it wasn't a big deal that she was talking to two of the most powerful men inside their dome city. "I've been around for a handful of days. I've done nothing extraordinary and I have no credible background. Why would you want someone like me?"

Sasori watched her for a moment before opening her mouth, but it was Deidara who beat him to the answer. "Because you're perfect for us! Akatsuki is always looking for strong members, and you're hell of a beast, but you're also really cute. Konan is strong too, but she's taken. You should totally join our gang, we have money and food and a sick joint and you could hang out with me or use a bike from our garage to go-."

Sasori hissed, grabbing Deidara sharply by the shoulder so the blond had to stop and turn back around to see the redhead. Sasori was glaring daggers and looked ready to kill. If Sakura hadn't spoken up, he might have maimed the blond.

"You have a garage? What kind?"

"We have everything," Sasori was quick to answer. "Whatever you want."

Sakura frowned, rocking back on her heels. "Sounds like fun, but no offense, I don't know you guys very well, and I like Konan, but that's not enough to make me want to leave where I am right now. I'm very comfortable with the Harpies."

"That is…" Sasori searched for the words to say. "That is understandable, however I can't say I'm not disappointed. If a full time membership is something too much for you, you might consider working alongside us as a contract laborer. It would give you a means to get to know us better and show off the organization's ideals in action. Even Temari has done this in the past."

Sakura looked back at her friend, raising a single brow in question. "Yeah, it's legit work," Temari said with a nod, "But that was a while ago. I doubt they need that much outside help. You could do a little bit at first, just what you feel comfortable doing, and build it around your own plans."

"I don't have…plans," Sakura started to say, but she remembered the fight tomorrow night. Making plans felt new to her all over again, but she was going to have to get used to it again.

"No, there's plenty for you to help us with," Deidara spoke up again. Sasori was still glaring, but the blond didn't seem to heed his partner's warnings. "Like you can run backup on missions and help with recon. You like heights, don't you?"

Sakura narrowed her eyes. "Why would you say that?"

"You're an enhanced, aren't you, with bird aspect? All the harpies have bird DNA somewhere in their bodies and are naturally better suited to work at heights that leave members like Sasori scared shitless. If it's something I need help with we always ask Konan or seek outside help because the rest are useless, un."

Sasori really looked ready to murder Deidara now, but this time even Konan looked a little tense.

Yes, Sakura loved heights. It was one of the reasons she lived in the tallest part of the Harpy hideout on the sixth floor. Temari and the other girls enjoyed heights too, but they didn't seek out the high points in a way Sakura would. Tenten's aspect was burrowing owl. She was silent and deadly, but lived in the basement with her weapons stash. Hanabi had some sort of sparrow gene that made her quick and light, but her body wasn't mature like the other girls' so she was comfortable everywhere, having a preference nowhere.

Sakura's bird was a vulture. She loved perching up high and riding her bike super fast. She also liked vantage points. The feeling of being above something, watching, waiting, that was something she seemed made with. There was something else though, a sense of foreboding that she suspected was tied to her enhanced death perception.

Something was wrong, Konan was tense and that tension was tied to something Deidara said. What had Deidara said that had been so bad? What was she missing? There was something going on between the three, she could taste it in the air around them, but she didn't know.

"What are you not telling me?" Sakura asked, eyes hardening all of a sudden. She looked from each member to the next. Behind her, Temari started to tense up as well, ready to take her side if things got bad.

Deidara looked a little panicked, looking from Sasori, (who was murderous) to Konan and then back at Sakura. There was something he was leaving out.

"We have access to your file," Konan spoke up. The boys both turned to glare at her, but Konan looked like she couldn't care less about what they thought. "We have the detailed information on your biochemistry and the history of your enhancements. It was something that attracted Sasori's attention even before we knew of you as a person. We're more interested in you capabilities, and it might sound harsh to hear, but there were plans to recruit you before you were dumped. Akatsuki and Oto do not have a good relationship, and it is possible that our…rivalry played some hand in your abandonment."

Sakura felt the room rock. "What do you mean you knew about me-that you were going to recruit me before I was-what are you saying?" Sakura asked, struggling to stay on top of everything she was hearing. They knew about her when she was being experimented on? Why didn't they do anything to stop it?

Konan's eyes were hard and her tone was unforgiving. "It wasn't in our best interests to play superhero and rescue every child that goes under the knife. Your file said you volunteered. It's not another person's place to interfere."

Sakura felt herself grimace. "I… volunteered?"

Deidara looked like a kicked pup but still spoke up. "It's not uncommon. There's a lot of risk involved, but plenty of people sign up for enhancements if they can pay. Sasori and I both volunteered, although our circumstances were…different. Sasori came from a dome that kind of-."

"Deidara," Sasori hissed. Sakura doubted he could look more murderous.

Sakura groaned, digging the heel of her palm over her eyes, trying to rub away the tension there. "You guys are creepy."

Konan nodded in agreement. "They are."

"Yeah…so, I don't think I would feel comfortable joining your shady ass group," Deidara's one visible eyebrow twitched and she almost felt bad for what Sasori was going to do or say after they were left alone. "But if it's paying work I guess that's something I could…think about doing if I was free. I'm just…still getting used to things around here and I don't have a lot of background knowledge or know many people, so I'm not ready for anything big."

"And that's totally understandable!" Deidara was quick to say. He didn't look nearly as nervous anymore. "Don't think we're not sympathetic, we understand what you're going through. But, if you get restless-"

Sasori elbowed Deidara out of the way and reached inside his pocket before pulling out what looked like a poker chip. It was a brass color with the black outline of a scorpion on one side, and a barcode on the back. "You can use this to reach me whenever you are ready. Take it to a kiosk or if you have a mobile with a reader that would work too. Once you start working you'll have enough to afford your own mobile, but until then, the public use ones should be safe enough for a casual call."

Sasori tugged on Sakura's wrist, turning her hand over to place his chip down in the center of her palm. He then folded her fingers over the chip, making sure it was secured before stepping back to give her space. Still, with the way he watched her, she felt just as crowded.

Deidara chuckled, seemingly unable to keep his excitement contained. "This is great, un. You can do your first job with me, cause next week I'm rigging the Druid Tower and I need help setting the charges."

"There's still time for the Iwa corp to pay, don't get overly excited," Konan sighed.

Deidara rolled his one visible eye. "You're just holding out because you don't like helping me." When he glanced back at Sakura his smile widened. "I'm paired with the DNA of a Gold Macaw, so I'm a bird freak just like you. That means we're extra compatible if ever you were interested in a mate."

Sasori reached out and hit the blond upside the head, causing Konan to roll her eyes and sigh. From behind her, Sakura heard Temari chuckle. 'He's super hard to pin down, but not a bad kisser,' she whispered into Sakura's ear.

Konan looked to Sakura. "If you were willing, I would appreciate not having to accompany the blond on his adventures."

"You don't like heights?" Sakura asked, remembering what Temari told her of Kona and how she had been spliced with the DNA of a crane.

Konan looked at Deidara pointedly. "Heights are not the problem."

Temari tapped Sakura on the shoulder before nodding towards the door. Sakura looked down at the disk in her hand and then back up at Sasori. He was still watching her, so she nodded in his direction and held up the piece, signaling that she would use it.

She started to turn away. "I have to go now."

Sasori nodded, as if approving her departure. "We will be there tomorrow to see your fight."

Taking her cue, Konan stepped forward, interrupting Sasori's line of sight to usher Sakura out and show the two girls the way back to the main floor. Before he could help himself, Sasori had already taken a half dozen paces in the direction of their departure before he caught himself. He remembered where he was and who he was with. Slowly he turned back to Deidara, keeping his head bent and eyes low. His fingers twitched for something blunt and he could hear the blond gulp loudly. "Was that, 'extra compatible' you said?"

* * *

Kisame looked up from the designs left behind on his workbench. He blinked once, trying to recall what Itachi had just said to him. He had been distracted with his side job again. "What was that?" he asked, knowing Itachi would be kind enough to repeat it without ridiculing him for being absent minded.

"The fight is tonight. Are you going to be in attendance?"

Kisame groaned, spacing on the details. Yeah, there was a fight tonight and it was special or something. Some of the guys had been acting like it was a big deal. Sasori and Deidara were oddly interested in the spectacle together. Deidara loved fights and attended regularly, but Sasori was such a shut it, the redhead rarely ever got out. Kisame couldn't remember the reason why Sasori was going tonight.

"No, I hadn't planned on it, but I guess I should. Why do you ask?"

"Hidan will be fighting. There is a fighter rumored to be…compatible with the organization. I have been asked to observe." Itachi waited a while before adding. "It's the girl Sasori had requested from Oto before they pulled out."

"Oh!"

Kisame snapped his fingers. Now he remembered why this night was a bigger deal. They had mentioned it earlier today and it was the first he heard of it, but the issue concerning Sasori and Oto was old news. He was well aware with that shake up. He had been one of the members tasked with roughing up stray Oto nin and trashing them silly till they talked. They went to Sasori when they didn't.

"Did you see the video of her Deidara pulled?" Kisame asked with a crooked grin. "She looks like a real hellcat."

"She has aspect of bird, not at," Itachi dryly replied.

Kisame rolled his eyes. "Of course you would say that. Point being, she's fine and dangerous."

Kisame let his mind drift back to the minute long video of a miniature angel thrashing a group of men twice her size. She was frustratingly adorable. Fine was not the right word for her, but Kisame doubted that Itachi wanted to hear about how he wanted to attack her and make her moan his name in pleasure over the bodies of their fallen enemies. It was terrible how much he daydreamed these days.

If Itachi knew about the dirty things going on in his partner's mind he didn't let it show. "She is promising. Deidara has already submitted a request for her contract on one of his projects. I think Leader will approve."

"What about here, around the base. She gonna show up for a tour anytime soon?"

Itachi closed his eyes and turned away. "If it is of your interest to see her again, tonight would be an opportunity for you. I'm only reminding you because Shisui has asked me to accompany him to the fight. He is one of the challengers tonight."

"What is he doing entering a fight. I thought he was doing that private detective stuff for rich old women who think their husbands are all cheating on them."

"…This is more lucrative. He is a last minute addition."

Kisame huffed, looking back at the line arts he had picked out for his next tattoo. He had plenty himself, but one of Konan's girls, a Harpy, asked for something on her back. Kisame had traced on a few designs with henna and the girl was trying them all out to get a feel for what she liked best. His mind did that thing again where it drifted and he wondered if Kin knew Sakura well enough to set up something between the two of them.

His mind wandered further and he felt the heat creep up his neck.

"Tonight?" he asked, keeping his voice extra gruff. "What time?"

"Fight starts in three hours. I'm leaving now though, to pick Shisui up. Your hog is in the base level garage, but you're on your own."

"Thank you mother, but I think I can manage myself just fine without all the reminders."

Itachi said nothing, but left the way he came. All alone again, Kisame flipped back to the tattoo with the bird skull that Kin had asked him to create a variation on. He'd favored the first one he inked for her, but he had a feeling she would pink the second or third ones. It wasn't her first tattoo with him, so he had an okay idea of how she saw things.

It wasn't quite time to leave yet when Kisame decided to finally emerge from his workshop and wander into the common room of their base. Much to his delight, he found both Deidara and Sasori there. It was rare for them to be out and together at the same time. Sasori was such a recluse and Deidara was hard to nail down. He had a feeling this was about their plans that night.

"You're going for the show tonight?" Kisame asked with a wide smirk. Sasori looked up and glared, making Kisame all the more eager to push the redhead's buttons. "I'm thinking of going myself. I saw your little play thing was on the registry list. Tight."

"Kisame," Deidara greeted politely with a nod. "You might not want to let Hidan hear you talk about him like he's Sasori's sex slave."

Kisame whistled, raising a brow. The blond wanted to get into it with him? Okay then. "I doubt you'll get much pleasure out of that fast finisher. Nah, I'm talking about the cute little pink bud from your video. I heard all about it."

Sasori glared daggers at Deidara, not realizing that the video of her fight had been so widely circulated. Deidara just rolled his eyes. "I asked them if they'd ever seen her before. What else did I have to go off of?" he grumbled, not wanting to endure any of Sasori's tortures.

Kisame laughed at his voice was a deep rumble. "Yeah, if the video was anything to go off of, I'm guaranteed a entertaining night out. You never mentioned how cute she was Sasori. I can think of a whole lot I could do with such an adorable playmate. Don't tell me that was your plan all along. I'll hand it to you if that's true. There's no better way to lose your virginity."

Sasori glare up sharply at Kisame who towered in the doorway. "I don't think I should have to hear this from you. You're being crude."

"Nah, what was crude was buying a 'playmate' in the first place, but don't let that bother you. No one's blaming you. I'd have done the same if I knew any better. At least she's out now, right?"

Sasori's eyes were non literal fire as the temperature in the room spike then dropped. "You won't approach her." It was a promise.

Kisame wasn't the type to be confrontational or antagonistic. No, Deidara was too good at that on his own, but it was too rare an opportunity to pass up to see the redhead get so heated. Kisame wanted to keep pushing Sasori's buttons and see how far he could go. "She's a free agent, as far as I know. She should know she can have a piece of this any time she wants a bite." Kisame made a suggestive face. "She should know she has options, right?"

Sasori stood suddenly and the furniture around him flew back, some pieces shattered. Deidara was holding the redhead back as Sasori seethed, blades half raise with venom ready to slay. For once his eyes were wild with fury. Kisame almost flinched.

"She is mine, she has always been mine. She was made for me in this world. She is my perfect half and would never be so tempted to lower herself to your level. She may be on her own now, but she has always been mine to win and to woo." Sasori calmed down enough to shake Deidara off without the blond having to lunge again. Sasori breathed deeply once, knives still out. "Stay out of her way or so help me I'll skin you alive."

In spite of himself Kisame couldn't help but laugh. Deidara looked at the blue skinned man like he had grown another head, but Sasori didn't even flinch at the large man's reaction. Sasori only scowled and his face said what his words didn't. 'What's so funny about my death threat?'

Kisame didn't think he would, but he smiled wide with his hands on his knees. "To see the dead faced virgin finally snap over something…and a girl no less, I never thought I'd see the day. I would have never guessed it to happen like this. I'll wish you luck, because it does seem like you care about her, but I won't wish you too much luck, because you're wrong about owning her. She never came to you. That fate you believe in so much didn't see you through. She's free now and I'll do as I please." Kisame started to turn away and took one step towards the exit before speaking again. "Don't bother wasting your breath a second time. I already sleep with one eye open. "

"You don't know what you're talking about. You've never even met her before," Sasori hissed.

"Neither have you, I mean, not really. At least I make good first impressions." Knowing he had annoyed the redhead sufficiently, Kisame waved a hand over his shoulder and turned to leave the way he came.

* * *

"So you're the newbie?"

Sakura turned around, hand still on the handle of her locker to see one of the fighters for that night standing in the doorway. She was still a bit jumpy about even attending such a large scale fight. When Temari had signed her up and convinced her to attend, she never mentioned how high brow this even would be. Nearly all the other fighters were enhanced and there were five levels of seats. Konan's pit fight last night hadn't been anything in comparison and Sakura only barely managed to scrape by with a win.

"Who's asking?" Sakura asked with a roll of false bravado. She squared her shoulders, hips set apart, and raised her chin in a show of defiance.

The new fighter laughed before stepping into her room, keeping his back close to the molding around the door. He was tall, taller than Sakura, but he was slender, almost wiry with lithe muscle. A speed fighter. Not someone Sakura wanted to take on since she was probably both weaker and slower than him. And considering her bruises from last night she was probably not as resilient to pain. How had Temari even gotten her a slot in these fights?

He was still smiling when he opened his mouth to talk. "Ah, no need to get so tense around me, I'm not worth it. My name's Shisui, I'm one of the last minute additions, just like you."

"How did you know I was a last minute addition?"

He rolled his eyes in good nature. She almost expected him to call her a silly child by the way he regarded her. She felt anger even if he was a little bit cute. "Most of the fighters are pretty well known and have been advertised weeks in advance. They always leave two slots open for last minute special guests-it's to increase the suspense."

Sakura crossed her arms over her chest and leaned back against her locker. "And you're the other special guest? How did you swing that?"

"My cousin is a member of Akatsuki. What about yourself?"

Sakura shrugged her shoulders. "A friend set this up for me. I didn't know it was such a big deal until just tonight. Everyone else is practicing last minute in their rooms."

"If it makes you feel any better, you're the only female fighter tonight. They just want a good show. If you feel like you can't cut it, there's no shame in tapping out."

Sakura lowered her lashes. "You just want one less fighter."

Shisui laughed rubbing the side of his neck. "Nah, I think they'd be satisfied with just seeing a pretty fighter for a change. All us guys get gross after a while. When Temari fought she was always super popular even if she couldn't break tier two."

Temari had fought before in these fights? She hadn't mentioned that to Sakura. "What about Konan?" Sakura asked. "Has she ever done this here?"

Shisui shook his head. "No, she prefers to be the one organizing the fights. I've seen her fight before, but never for sport or entertainment. She's mellowed out since meeting Nageto, but even when she was a wild thing she was always…cunning. It was different, I guess." He glanced back at Sakura and the smile came back to his lips. "She said she was looking forward to seeing you tonight. Apparently you impressed her last night. Sorry, I wish I could have seen it myself."

Sakura didn't feel so hostile anymore, after hearing about how he talked about Konan. It was a tone of reverence and respect. Sakura's gut told her to like Konan, and so it also told her to like people who respected the blue haired woman. Sakura relaxed her stance a little bit and flipped a strand of hair back out of her face. "Why, so you could find a flaw in my form or fighting style?"

"Oh no, you've see through my plans. That's exactly why I wish I could have seen you fight." He let his eyes give her another one over, from her toes to her crown, that left her feel exposed. His smirk was playful and made her blush. "The only reason," he added with a chuckle.

There were footsteps outside in the hallway and Shisui broke off eye contact to turn and see who was walking down. He grimace at whatever he saw before turning to look back at Sakura. "It looks like I'm due back at my post. I'm the second set."

"I'm the fifth," Sakura murmured. There were eight sets and sixteen fighters. It wasn't likely they would meet to fight unless it was the semi finals.

Something she said made Shisui wince. "Watch out for Hidan, he's in the eight set, but it's almost guaranteed if you make it far enough you'll fight him for the third round. He's an Akatsuki member and the clear favorite tonight. Sorry."

Sakura swallowed. "Great. Thanks."

Shisui nodded before stepping back out and heading back down the hallway. Once he was gone Sakura turned back to her locker and groaned into the dingy metal. "What the hell am I doing?"

"Sakura?"

When she looked up it wasn't Temari she saw in the doorway, but Hanabi. Hadn't she been going to visit her sister today? "Hanabi," Sakura said in greeting. "What's up?"

Then Kin poked her head in from outside, scowling. She locked eyes with Sakura then huffed loudly, looking away. "We're here to see you fight and cheer you on," Hanabi said, smiling. "You probably don't have many fans who actually know you, do you?"

"We didn't make a banner so don't look so happy," Kin grumbled stepping in after Hanabi and closing the door.

"I was just about to get dressed again," Sakura said. There was a mirror towards the back of the room and a small curtain she could stand behind, but everything looked super sketch and dinky. She had been tempted to just go out wearing her tee shirt and shorts. Temari would be upset about not 'representing' the Harpies and shit like that, but Sakura felt less and less like leaving the room at all. "I don't know what…I don't feel like I know what I'm doing anymore. It's just a fight right?"

Hanabi picked at the denim vest with their logo and name on the back and laid it out so the Harpy bird was visible across the back. It was one of Temari's old ones, so there was a slit underneath the words HARPY that a pair of wings could slip through without obstruction. It was a well worn piece of clothing.

"Don't think about the fight, just worry about getting dressed first. One step at a time," Hanabi encouraged.

With a huff Sakura pulled her shirt up over her head and exchanged it for the midriff tank that squeezed her tight. It worked like a sports bra, meaning it was great for moving and fighting in, but Tenten liked the shirt because of the view it created. Temari had a whole bunch of them.

Sakura wanted to fight in her shorts, but they were long and loose, easy to grab onto and get caught up in. She exchanged them for a pair of black shorts. There were neon pink stars sewn around the hems and over the butt pockets. It was gaudy, but she couldn't argue that they weren't easy to move around in and great to fight in.

"Last time Temari was out there it was just panties, so don't wrinkle your nose," Kin sighed.

Sakura shot the girl a look of horror and Hanabi giggled. "There are freaky old people watching this fight. I don't want them looking at my-ugh this makes me feel sick."

Hanabi picked up the denim vest and helped Sakura into it. Buttoning the front made the pink haired girl feel a bit more relaxed. "Try not to think of those things, They don't mean anything. The first fight was already going on when we came down. Do you want to see who's up now?"

Sakura thought it would only make her more nervous, but it would be a good idea to see the styles of the other fighters, so she forced herself to nod. They had their own box close to the stage, low down on the ground floor, but there were monitors and video cameras all over, so it was hard to miss anything. Temari was probably already out there watching.

Sakura was right. Temari had been in their box already, but she wasn't alone. The blond looked up when she heard their approach and scooted down the bench to make room. The girl sitting next to her look up from her tightly clenched hands and the shadow cast by her oversized hood wasn't enough to hide her pale, moon colored eyes. Hanabi's sister.

"Hinata," Hanabi exclaimed. "You said you were going to go back home. What are you doing here?"

"I-I-I wanted to, or I was hoping someone was free to escort me back. I-when I tried leaving I got mixed up and hid and now I'm here but I wanted to go back and I-I…"

"I got it," Kin cut in. "I'll take her back, you guys enjoy the fights.

Hanabi looked confused. "I can take her home real quick."

Hinata shook her head, bowing it further into the shadow cast by her hood. "Y-you wanted to see this. I will be fine with Kin." She peeked up a bit, looking at Sakura. There might have been a grin there too, but it was hard to make out with the hood making her face so dark. "You are Sakura. We have not met yet. I am Hinata. I brought extra medicine this week for you. I hope you find it to your liking."

"It's nice to meet you Hinata," Sakura said with an awkward sort of half bow. "I've heard nothing but amazing things about you. You've been so helpful. Thanks."

Hinata chuckled and it sounded cute. "I only want to be helpful. I'm a burden most of the time, so I'm glad to hear you thought I was useful for something. Maybe we will see each other again sometime soon."

Hinata seemed so quiet, shy, and sheltered. Sakura was surprised that a girl with the same background and blood as Hanabi could come out so muted. Hanabi could be a real firecracker when you got her going, and she was plenty feisty on her own. Hinata seemed scared.

"I would love to see you again and talk. Next time?" Sakura asked, trying to sound as soft and kind as possible. For all she knew, Hinata was a scared rabbit that could scamper off at the slightest thing.

Outside there was a loud cheer and Sakura glanced at one of the video screens to see Shisui of all people standing over his fallen opponent. Sakura cursed under her breath. His fight hadn't lasted long at all and she already missed it. Temari must have heard her frustration because she chuckled. "Don't worry, it's taped if you want to rewind and see the playback. They're all tapped for us. Fans don't get this treat, you have to be a fighter for such privileges."

Behind them, Hinata said her goodbyes and left with Kin as the next set of opponents took to the ring. Sakura felt nervous seeing the numbers flash on the bottom of the screen. She was the fifth set and they were already starting the third. It would be her turn soon. She tried to distract herself from the fate to come by watching the fight, and it didn't take long for her to pick up on some things.

"They're both enhanced," Sakura gasped. "I thought that was a rare thing."

"Almost all of the fighters here tonight are advanced. The only one I think is Might Guy, and that guy is a beast for a reason." Temari chuckled before reaching for a beer that was left behind on the side table for her. She took a swing before speaking again. "Enhancements are rare because they are expensive and dangerous, no because they're illegal. Everything is illegal, don't stop no one from doing nothing."

Temari's words reminded Sakura of something she heard out of the redhead last night. "Temari, do most people volunteer for their enhancements?"

Temari regarded Sakura out of the corner of her eye before nodding. "Most, yes, but not all. And most of the enhancements you'll see are pretty generic. Enhanced strength, better vision, hearing, speed, dexterity, endurance, the basics. Adaption of animal aspects or the DNA shit we went though…that's near unheard of. Deidara said he was bonded with a bird but you won't see and feathers on his ass, he didn't get the same package as you and me. He'll have no physical characteristics but some of the traits of his animal, it's safer that way."

"I haven't seen anyone with animal features yet," Sakura mused. "Is that because it is more dangerous?"

"You have a nine out of ten death rate. Chances aren't good enough for most people."

"Is that something…you signed up for?" Sakura asked, feeling hesitant as soon as the words were on her lips.

Hanabi flinched, looking down at her hands.

Temari's expression was grim as she watched the fighters come to the end of their round. "No," she finally admitted. Those weren't good odds for me, but I didn't have a choice. I was picked up out of a family from the streets because I was a person no one would miss. The same can be said for all our girls. Sasori said you were a volunteer, but that's not likely. Sorry."

"You don't think I volunteered." It wasn't a question, just a statement for Sakura to gauge Temari's reaction from. The blond was stone faced, as usual. "Do you think Sasori is lying?"

Temari shrugged. "I don't care one way or the other, it doesn't change my opinion of him. He's from the Sandstone dome, like me. That places messes people up. Their government conscripted teenagers and children to more advanced genetic manipulation way back when the rioting was going on. Sasori's an old fart but he doesn't age like the rest of us because of what they did to him as a kid. Ah, but that was before my time, so I don't know. Maybe he knew, maybe he didn't, I don't think he cared to think about it too much as long as he got what he want. That's the type of person he is, from my brushes with him."

Behind them the crowd roared and Sakura saw that one of the fighters was bleeding heavily and looked ready to roll over and die in a ditch. These fighters were not like the ones she encountered last night. Tonight, they were allowed to kill.

"What do you know about the man named Hidan?" Sakura's eyes stayed stuck on the screen, praying the fight dragged on longer. "I might have to fight him in a few rounds."

"Yeah, tap out of that. You win money for every victory, so take what you can and leave. Hidan is notorious for being more brutal than the others. Many of his fights end in death-or sacrifices as he calls them."

Temari pointed to a tab at the bottom of her monitor and a row of faces pulled up. There were two blank faces for Shisui and Sakura, but Hidan's stats were in there. Sakura slid over on to finger through the stats and details. There was a box marked FATALITIES with the number 31 next to it. Sakura thought that was excessive considering his win streak. He was a strong fighter, taking the top tier victory for the last three fights organized by the Akatsuki. In all he had 8 losses.

Feeling shaken, Sakura minimized his page and found the profile of the man she would be fighting next. Strength enhanced, he was bulky and slow looking. His stats were far less frightening, but when she compared all his victories with all his fatalities, nine out of his twelve victories were fatalities.

"You can take him." Sakura looked up at saw Hanabi watching her. Hanabi nodded again. "You'll win the fight against him, he's old and on his way out. They might have set you against him on purpose because they want to see you more."

"It's not him you should be worried about, and don't fret over Hidan, just tap out." Temari reached over and pulled up the data for another male. "If he wins his fight, this is the bastard you'll be fighting in the next round. When you do, don't hold back."

The boy had a music note tattooed to his beseech and a snake on his opposite arm, coiling all up and down. Sakura felt dizzy for a moment. "Is that…is he from Oto?" she asked in a whisper, not daring to trust her gut.

"It's not confirmed, because of memory wipes, but some of us believe he's the freak who kidnaps the kids Oto experiments on." Temari glanced from Sakura to Hanabi and then back to Sakura, measuring the older girl for her reaction. "What do you think?"

Sakura shut her eyes as the crowd around her cheered again. Someone had won and someone had lost. The next round was the round before her own first fight. "I think I remember him." She didn't want to say it out loud, as if that made it more real, but the words came out on their own almost.

Temari leaned back in her seat, watching as two young male fighters came out to square off against one another. "Then kill him, and don't hold back."

* * *

Shisui whistled to himself, skipping down the halls like a carefree schoolgirl. When he caught someone staring he just smiled wide and winked. Sometimes they stared still, but the ones who had seen his fight looked away and prayed he didn't stop for them.

He stopped in front of a door and heaved into it, not caring that the occupants might not want to be disturbed. The locks were crappy all over the place in their base so Shisui knew it was easy enough to get in anywhere even if it was locked, so long as it wasn't a room on the VIP lounge level way up. Hidan's room was nowhere near the VIP rooms.

"What the hell?" Hidan snarled, looking up from his alter. His violet colored eyes looked like liquid fire and Shisui knew to tread carefully if he didn't want to get mixed up in a scuffle. He was fast, but in such tight quarters there was no guarantee for escape. Hidan narrowed his eyes at the new arrival and sneered. "Itachi's cousin."

"Hello to you too, Hidan." Shisui didn't stop smiling as he stood in the doorway, too weary to step over the threshold. "Are you getting ready for your fight or are you watching the current one?"

"Current fight is a joke," Hidan scoffed, turning back to his alter. "What are you here for? Hurry and get out."

"Ah, I thought you would want to hear what I have to say. I came straight from Itachi. You might be fighting the girl Sasori was super interested in, you know, the cute pink haired pixie chick."

"If you're here to lecture me about holding back save your breath, I already swore to Leader I wouldn't kill her, if she gets that far."

"You don't think she will?"

Hidan looked up from his altar and glared. There were signs of strain around his neck and Shisui knew to take a half step back in case the agitation was too much for Hidan to bear and he lunged at the speed fighter. Today was not a day to test his limits.

Hidan swallowed and the veins smoothed out, disappearing from view. Closing his eyes he looked away and answered with his eyes still shut. "The first fight was a sham. Ginzo was old and on his way out. We all knew it. She was paired up against the old fart for hoots and hollers. Sasori probably had a hand in that, wanting to keep her safe."

"Eh? But you know it was Pein and Itachi who organize the rankings. Sasori had nothing to do with it."

"I don't care!" Hidan snapped. "Why the fuck are you here bothering me? I have better things I could be doing with my fucking time than listen to you yap about the damn matches and the damn girl and the dam rules. Go get a life, heathen."

"Hey, hey, no need to get nasty. Some of us are just trying to be friendly here. I'll get going in just a second since it looks like my job here is done. Itachi and Pein just wanted me to remind you of your promise. You can forget them sometimes when you're….agitated. They're just concerned."

"If I said I wouldn't fucking kill her I won't! Happy?"

Shisui smiled wide. "Perfectly. I'll tell them what you told me. Good luck in your next match."

"Keep your dirty luck to yourself!" Hidan snapped, turning back to his altar where the triangle trapped within a halo hung above a table with old candles, the kind people used to make for light. Candles were rare, Hidan had to make his own out of melted down wax that was salvaged from the old toy factories at the outskirts. Among the candles were what looked like rosary beads and a couple reflective dishes. In each dish sat a chunk of meat, still bloody from the animal body it had just been pulled from minutes before.

Shisui paused with the door partially closed, hearing Hidan begin to chant. Behind him echoed footsteps. Looking back over his shoulder he saw Kakuzu coming down the hall. It would be Hidan's turn to fight soon, so that must be why his partner was coming to get him.

Shisui was cautious around Hidan, but made an effort to avoid Kakuzu on account of how sneaky the bastard was. He would suspect something if he talked to Shisui for any length of time, and it wasn't because Shisui was bad a keeping secrets, but Kakuzu was just that good at finding them.

Before the taller male could call out to him, Shisui turned on his heel and walked out of the hallway, taking strides longer than were his average to get away as quickly as possible. He had things to tell Itachi.

* * *

Hours from their initial arrival Sakura was getting ready to step out into the ring again for her second fight of the evening. The entire fight would span two days on account of how long some of the fights took and how weary the fighters were getting. It wasn't a good show if both fighters were barely standing before the match even began.

Sakura was a little sore from her first fight. He had landed a few decent punches, but the fight didn't last long enough for him to have access to weapons so her injuries were ones that she had to worry about wrapping up. Hanabi held ice to the skin over her kidneys, hoping to ease the swelling.

The lights from their den turned green and Sakura stood, knowing that was her cue to get out there. The audience was crazy loud for every fight, but they really screamed when she stepped out. Way back with her super hearing she heard someone scream about taking her shirt off or something lewd like that, and she suspected all the excitement had little to do with her fighting skills and more to do with her curves. During the last fight someone had tossed their underwear on stage. It was lovely.

Sakura found the anger burning inside of her and wrapped her hands around it. She wanted to stay above it all, but when she looked up she saw the man named Dosu who had the music note and the snake tattoos that triggered a ghost of a memory in Sakura's mind. She froze in his stance and he noticed. His smirk was crooked and jarring to her senses. Somewhere behind her the countdown started and they were nearly at zero, but all she could hear was his breathing.

He breathed so heavily after getting kicked in the neck. He sounded ready to die, but didn't. He didn't even slow as he stuffed her further back into the cage and shut the door.

Her bones were pulled at odd angles and she thrashed, trying to break free. She couldn't. She was trapped, pinned down and folded up like a rag doll in a square box.

"Comfy?" he mouthed just as the timer went off.

Sakura lost control of her anger and didn't bother playing with caution as she lunged. Her hands weren't fists, but her fingers were sprayed out like claws, tearing the first layer of skin from his face and drawing blood. It did little to no damage, but the momentum wasn't wasted. She twisted, following her hand, and her knee found contact with the side of his face. She stumbled back and it was enough time for Sakura to land, recover, and spin into another kick that threw her whole body's weight at his stomach. She didn't give him time to recover. She dug her elbow into his chest again and again until he caught it and flung her away.

She felt fire burning the corners of her eyes and dammed the moisture from her unshed tears. There was dust in the air. That's all it was. Her heart was an inferno.

There were other girls there too. There were rows of crates meant for dogs where little girls were folded up and boxed up. The girl in the cage right next to her died in the night. They didn't come back for her for a full three days.

He kept trying to reach for her, to grab on to her and hold her. She knew if he got the chance, he would be harder to escape than a vice. His arms were thick enough to be tree trunks. She remembered tree trunks. There were no trees in this dome, but she remembered tree trunks. She remembered other things too, like a tall man with ruby eyes that burned and a world that felt like fur under her fingers, but nothing else made much sense.

He reached for her and she ducked, weaving in and out and just beyond his reach. She countered when she could, and it was obvious she was faster. He was weak on his left where his last opponent had dislocated the shoulder. It had since been set, but there was discoloration of the skin and Sakura didn't doubt it was bruised. She jabbed out, ramming her fingers into the skin around his socket. He didn't howl, but he snarled in anger and countered faster than before. He was a dangerous monster.

But so was she.

Hanabi and Temari were cheering from the side. Even Kin screamed for her victory, demanding nothing less over the Oto scum. Sakura was anger made flesh as she thrashed and spun into his face, clawing and jabbing at every square inch before bending backwards to catch the underside of his jaw with her heel. She was going to get tired soon, but as long as she didn't forget the crates or the odd angles of her arms being tied behind her back and her shirts being cut open around the shoulder blades and the needles in her bones she would never tire out.

She began to scream with every hit and strike. He took too many to stay standing, but somehow he did. He was strong, an enhanced no doubt. He could take more abuse than the others, his body was built like a rock. But Sakura was a storm, and she would rage against him as many decades as she needed to in order to wear him away.

Then he caught her ankle and she was flying up into the air and crashing down. She kicked at his hand and he released her, but not before her body made a dent in the mat floor. She had folded her hands behind her back before impact, so her head hadn't sustained much damage, but she was still dizzy.

He reached for her and when she dodged it wasn't by enough. He grabbed a fistful of her hair and yanked. She screamed and fell to her knees as his own knee rammed up into the side of her face. She saw stars before he turned her over, ready to pin her arms up again. She thrashed blindly this time, her fingers curled like claws into his skin. She was blind and dizzy but she pulled herself up by the claws she buried in his shoulder and found his neck with her teeth. She didn't remember having fangs, but the sharp bone of her teeth tore his neck up. Her jerked with his hand in her hair in an effort to get her away from his neck, but her fangs were hooks in his flesh.

She hit something important when blood began to gush everywhere. He screamed, pushing her away to grab his neck in an effort to stop the bleeding. Coughing up blood that had fallen into her mouth, she let him push her away. She spit his blood down at his feet, teetered on her feet.

At the corner of the ring there stood a medic, waiting for the man to tap out so they could help. Dozu must have been out of his mind, not thinking straight, because all he did was cry. Sakura sat on her haunches, breathing heavily, eyes still closed, teeth still red, listening to it all.

He cried and cried and cried. Then he didn't. When she looked up, he was dead.

"Congratulations," one of the medics said before he and his partner flipped the dead body onto a stretcher between them. Sakura couldn't look at the sight, but turned her attention out towards the audience. They were even louder than before when they were throwing their underwear at her.

She saw silver and her heart felt sick, sicker than ever before.

"Kabuto," she hissed as Temari rushed out to meet her. Sakura didn't remember it, but between Temari and Hanabi she was led back to their room and dunked in ice before the bandages were applied. She wanted to sleep. She felt hungry and alone and cold and cut off from everything that gave her life. There was blood in hair from where her scalp bled. Some of it had already dried, but the area was still sore. There was blood in other places too. Her head hurt like hell. She held the side of her face and cried.

The tournament ran out of time and the rest of the fights came up being slated for the next night. Sakura thought they would take a break after her third fight, but was grateful that the rest came sooner rather than later. There had been one fight that lasted nearly thirty minutes on its own and while the audience was entertained, it was too much and too long to hope to keep the people happy.

"They make more money when they drag it out longer," Tenten offered, watching Sakura assemble the parts needed for her bike.

Tenten had taken the time off to spend Sakura's money on the parts they needed to make her engine strong enough to handle nitrate pills. Sakura was grateful for the distraction, even if it was only for a few hours.

Tenten regarded Sakura wearily before speaking up again. "I know you heal extra fast, but you should be resting. You only have a few hours."

"I'm only doing this so I can go riding. It makes sense I should enjoy some of it, right? I mean, I could die tonight just like that kid from Oto, or Kabuto could come back to pick me off and I'd never see the light of day, much less enjoy the new bike I sacrificed so much for."

"Temari said she and Hana would look into the Kabuto matter. You might have just imagined it though, because it doesn't sound like the thing Kabuto would do when Sasori still has a hit out on the runt's ass. Just saying."

Sakura prayed that's all it was. She had been hit pretty hard and things were hard to see, but his face had been clear enough to trigger the memories she thought she had forgotten. Was that all it was, her memories playing tricks on her during the haze? Seeing Kabuto made sense since he was the one Dosu answered to, and may of her memories of Dosu tied up with memories of Kabuto. Dosu trapped and kidnapped Sakura for Kabuto; at least she remembered that much, even if she still couldn't recall any details about her life before waking up as a bird freak lab reject.

Absently, her hand moved to the base of her shoulder blades and felt the lump that was beginning to had two of them, but they looked disgusting and were both covered in plenty of flesh that would be painful to tear free if her bones ever fully developed. No one told her, but she knew it was a far shot for her wings to grow back. Tenten made the choice to have hers burned down to stubs, but Kin lost hers against all hope, and Hanabi's were gross and mutated to never grow larger than the pale white things they were, spanning hardly a fore arm's reach. Hana and Temari's grew back, but their damage hadn't been so bad. Sakura never remembered having wings in the first place, so she wondered how much it meant to her to loose them. Did she even really, truly want them back?

"Maybe I did imagine seeing him there. And even if I did, there's nothing he could have done with so many people there. Worst of all make a move and expose his location to the Akatsuki who are already pissed off at him."

Tenten slapped her knee. "See? That's what I'm saying."

The last part Sakura needed to secure tightened and she had to twist hard to get the bolt to secure. Satisfied with her work she sat up and wiped down her seat before mounting and turning her key into the ignition. It was one of the older models that still used keys. Tenten's was fingerprint activated, but the upgrade wasn't worth it to Sakura. It was just unnecessary bulk. The engine roared to life before settling into an addictive purr that reminded her of the predatory nature of men. Sakura smiled, tracing her hand over the side of the engine, feeling it's heat as it rumbled beneath her.

"Sexy," Tenten chuckled.

Satisfied, Sakura turned the key back and dismounted. She would take the bike out on a short run after a snack and a trip to the bathroom. Tenten was grinning.

"After you throw your match we should go riding. The streets won't be too busy, I'll show you all the popular haunts you can take a bike these days."

Sakura blinked. "Throw my match? What are you talking about? I know that's what Temari said to do, but I should at least try."

Tenten's smile faded. "What? But no one expects you to fight Hidan. It's not worth it. You'll lose."

It was the truth but Sakura bristled. "You don't know that. The last guy I fought was pretty tough too, but I still pulled through."

The brunet rolled her eyes. "Just barely. Look, I'm not trying to be mean, but it's more work than it's worth. Hidan's expected to take the fight as well as the tournament, and he's an Akatsuki member. He's a monster, way out of our league."

"But-"

"Don't worry about what people will think. You're pretty, that's all they want to see. Leave the rest to us." Tenten smiled again, and it was supposed to be encouraging. "Better?"

Mutely Sakura nodded, feeling stunned by how base she was left feeling. She knew she wasn't the best out there, she knew it was likely she would loose, she knew she still had a lot to learn, but giving up didn't sit well with her. It didn't bother her that they didn't believe in her, a part of her didn't believe in herself. It just…Sakura couldn't name how it made her feel. She didn't like to leave it up to other people.

Skipping her snack, Sakura headed straight to the bathroom and locked the door behind her, even though the room was long enough for four stall and just as many sinks.

She stared at herself in the mirror, recognizing less and less of herself. A face stared back at her but it wasn't her's. Something about the image in the glass made her wince and want to recoil. She wasn't ugly, she wasn't terrifying or anything like that, but when she saw herself as something she didn't want to be anymore. She wasn't the girl they found in the garbage anymore.

There was a pair of scissors left behind in the alcove above the sink and below the mirror. There was also a heavy razor, the kind men used for shaving beards. Sakura grabbed the scissors first and began to chop away and what she could. The sound of blades cutting through the fibers of her pink locks oddly soothed her. She felt like she was doing the right thing. She turned the sink on and ran the water over her scissors, wetting the blades before going back lighting was dim, but she was just able to see behind her ear and get the hair growing there.

Sakura traded her scissors for the razor and buzzed the side of her scalp down till it was a fine hue of pink. She had suspected her hair being dyed its color, but because of her eyebrows and other clues, she knew that whatever wacky experimentation she went through had resulted in naturally pink hair follicles. Some Lamb Vultures were red or had reddish colorings, according to what she read.

Sakura replaced the razor and then ran her hands through the water, rinsing them. Her hair was shorter all around, and on the one side she had it buzzed down to her scalp. With her hands wet, she combed through what was left of her hair with her fingers and slicked it all back into a victory role that made the center portion of her hair stand up.

She pulled on the mirror and found the styling gel Temari used on herself. It was enough to keep her fohawk up and styled as well as the side curtain. There were other things behind the mirror that Sakura borrowed. She lined her eyes with black and red and painted her lashes till they stood out like teeth over her smokey eyes. Dark lipstick sat on its side, old and forgotten. Sakura painted her lips a dark shade of maroon then replaced the stick.

When she closed the mirror and saw what had become of her she froze. She looked angry and for some reason she felt like that was how it should me. The angry look suited her. She was meant to scare men with a glare and silence enemies with a look. She was powerful, and now she looked the part.

There were huge chunks of hair left in the sink for her to grab at before tossing them into the nearby garbage. Watching the short strands fall away was enough for her. She was different now. She was a part of this world now.

"Sakura?" Hanabi was calling from the other side of the door. There were other bathrooms, so Sakura knew it wasn't the toilet the younger girl wanted.

She checked herself once more in the mirror before opening the door. "I'm going out tonight," was all Sakura said in way of an explanation.

* * *

Shisui skipped past her room again, trying to look distracted, but it was obvious to the scowling blond inside that he was checking in. "She's still not here," Temari snarled.

The Uchiha raised his hands in good nature and laughed her snarl off. "I didn't ask."

"You didn't need to. Go back to your own room."

There were some people he would stay to annoy, and there were some people he would like to push their buttons and see how agitated they could become before he ran away. But out of both fear and respect, Temari was not one of those people to Shisui, so he backed away with a smile before turning on his heel and heading towards the exit.

He had won his third match and was bored. The order was all screwed up so he had to wait and see other fights before Sakura took the stage opposite of Hidan. The second fight of the night was almost over. Sakura should be getting ready soon, but apparently she hadn't even showed up. Was she planning on throwing the match. If she listened to Temari he would believe it. That girl was practical, if nothing else.

He stopped when he saw a biker walk in, still wearing their neon pink and blue helmet with the draft vents shaped like cat ears on top. Before she pulled it away he knew who it was and grinned. Her legs were iconic enough for him to recognize all on their own.

"You cut your hair," he breathed out in a laugh, noting her scowl. To him it looked more like a pout with her neon colored lips puckered like that. Her eyes were lined in black koi but accented with white and pink shadow, casting a glimmer over her features to match her bright lips. She looked the part of an entertainer, but her bruises were all but faded, meaning she was ready for another fight, if she chose to accept. Either way, she looked hella cute. "It looks cute."

"It's not supposed to look cute, it's supposed to be practical."

It didn't escape his notice that the side she hacked off was also the side where the fighter from yesterday grabbed her. The change in style meant more now that he made that connection.

"You're still pretty, I think. Ah, Temari is going to chew you out. You're up next." Behind them the buzzer sounded the end of a match. "…Which means you need to make for the ring ASAP pretty thing. Have you thought about your fight?"

"You don't think I'm going to bail?" Sakura asked, tugging on her gloves with the extra row of barbs running across her knuckles.

Shisui fell into step beside her. "Hidan loves cutting and slashing with weapons, which are legal after three minutes, not eight during this round. Also he's a sick pervert who likes pain and has an in-human regeneration ability. That's his main enhancement."

"So…"

Sakura pursed her lips and Shisui felt a thrill that stemmed from his desire to touch those lips with his own. It practically made him salivate and he wondered if the predator mammal he had been bonded with had anything to do with it. He really wanted to kiss her.

Sakura glanced sideways at him before speaking again. "You think I should fight?"

"Aren't you going to? That's what you're doing here." They were nearly at the place where a ref would reach down and grab her up, taking her away from him and he wanted to frown. Walking alongside her was nice. "Hidan's strong, and he's a brute. You shouldn't fight him, that's what I think."

"But you're giving me advice."

Shisui laughed. "It's not about what I want, lovely. I'm not the one who has to make that call. Only you can decide to fight the monster or not. No one else is allowed to make that choice for you, not even your friends."

They were just outside the fighting ring and Temari and Hanabi were jogging up to meet Sakura. Hidan hadn't climbed up yet either, on account of how long it took him to get from his room downstairs where Kakuzu was also lurking, no doubt. Temari looked pissed, but didn't say anything, preferring to preserve her grim and silent persona in front of others. Hanabi, on the other hand, wouldn't shut up, asking Sakura a dozen questions each at a mile a minute. It was enough to make Shisui groan.

"What do you care?" The Uchiha blurted out before he remembered he was trying to keep a low profile. "You were all gonna tell her to throw the match anyway. What would it matter if she missed?"

Temari turned coolly to glare at the Uchiha and Shisui had to fake a smile to keep from practically pissing himself. If looks could kill he would be six feet under. "I'm sorry," she bit out. "I don't recall inviting you to this conversation."

Shisui could only laugh, or at least try to. It came out sounding more like a squeak. "I was just leaving."

"Yeah." Temari tried to smirk but it looked like a sneer. "I thought so."

Shisui turned on his heel and took a step before a sound made him stop. "Thanks." He looked back over his shoulder and saw Sakura watching him. She nodded again. "For your advice…thanks." She was smiling.

He really wanted to kiss her. Damn. "Anytime," he laughed before heading away.

When Shisui walked into Itachi's VIP observation room, he was still grinning. His younger cousin frowned, looking Shisui over from head to toe.

"You're still a mess from your fight. What are you grinning about?"

Shisui was positively giddy. Closing the door behind him he fell against it and slid down a bit with a childish giggle. "I got her to smile at me."

Itachi made a dismissive sound in his throat. "You're not allowed to mate with her."

Shisui's smile fell from his face, replaced with a glare. "Says who?"

"You're not compatible, and she's a Harpy."

"So? Konan left for Pein, and she's part bird. There are other reasons for mating than the babies. It doesn't matter if a partner is infertile, least not to me. I don't believe in all that proper bonding nonsense, and I'm surprised you would buy into that."

Itachi still watched the ring below as Hidan climbed up, swearing over his shoulder at his partner. "Those were not my implications. You're not compatible because you're an ass and she's still mentally scarred, and by being a Harpy, aside from her inability to produce offspring, she's guarded closely by the other females and readily protected. They don't like you."

"You're just saying that because you want a shot at her for yourself," Shisui said around his pout, crossing the room to stand in front of the window and watch as Sakura was led up by the ref. Even from far away she was super cute to him. It almost hurt. "I've seen how you look at her."

"I don't think we should forget how terrible you are with women on account of your impulsive nature. Nor should we forget the greater picture. Do not forget our true objective."

Shisui glared at his cousin, but it was a glare without malice. Itachi was going to die old and lonely one day with that sort of attitude. "Are we still going to try an' convince her to join our cause when she's so hesitant to do anything for Akatsuki? Can't we just…make friends and let it be."

The ref was still standing between the fighters, speaking about something when Itachi answered his cousin. "The Onyx Dome will fall. When it does, who will be left standing among the wreckage of an outdated autocracy? The other Uchiha are already in place for her liberation and no one else will lend aid after hearing of Madara's name, least of all Pein and the Akatsuki."

Shisui still seemed unconvinced. "But she's so tiny. You think she's worth it as a fighter?"

The ref started to walk away from the two and a countdown began on the monitors and screens inside their room. Itachi stood back, away from the glass, and pulled a screen down from the ceiling to view in HD. "We shall see with this fight, won't we?"

5…

4…

3…

2…

1

…

No one moved.

He was waiting for her to tap out. He didn't expect her to stay in and fight with him. After the first few seconds passed and all that happened was her adaption of a defensive position he started to sneer. Hidan looked wild when he sneered. He always looked a little wild, but across from him, circling on the mat, there was a whole new type of wild to him that Sakura had never seen in anyone so far.

Hidan was a hunter that never lost. She was a lamb.

"Bitch is going to stay. Kakuzu can't blame me for what doesn't make it."

He would taunt her and she would hear him and she would hurt for it, so she braced herself with a wall of mental defenses. Nothing else mattered except this fight. Nothing else matter except what happened here and now.

Hidan wasn't slow, but Sakura was fast, faster than him. She swung at him and he blocked, swing after swing after swing he bobbed around her fists. He was untouchable. Untouchable until he tried to take a swing at her, that's when Sakura dived in, closer than before to land an uppercut that left his jaw stretching for the ceiling.

The crowd was always wild, but it was a whole new level when she landed her first hit and followed it up with an elbow and knee all in his chest. He stumbled back and she pressed the advantage. She would not be stopped.

A part of her was just as wild as the audience around her, driving her forward, driving her on. The part of her that was monster grew and she felt a hunger for blood. She wanted to see him on the ground. She wanted to crush him under her heel, She wanted to hear his neck snap and break each of his fingers after that sickly descent to the mat floor.

He swung at her, reaching wide and she had to step around him to escape his reach, but just for a moment. She stepped on his calf and he buckled, going down on one side. She grabbed one of his nipples and twisted, pulling him all the way to the floor before kicking his side and backtracking.

He coughed up blood, laughing. Sakura could barely remember her own name when Hidan looked back over his shoulder, eyes still wild as ever, and froze her in place with a stare. "Kinky bitch, aren't ya?"

Words didn't mean anything to her.

He climbed to his feet and the second she felt fair about it she kicked at his legs again, he was smarter this time. She landed a few more hits, before finally grabbing on of his ears and yanking hard. His face connected with her knee and blood ran heavy over the floor. She jabbed at his ribs too, and she swore she heard one snap.

He had suffered heavy damages, without inflicting much of anything to Sakura. It didn't make sense. He was supposed to be one of the greatest fighters in the game, but he was barely even anding anything on her. How did he expect to win?

She attacked again and again until his knees, elbows, and fists were stained with his blood. He should have fallen, but he kept coming back for more, his eyes wild and hungry. The monster inside of Sakura was screaming.

He rushed her, grabbing her around the middle and piling her into the floor. She remembered feeling this before, and her body reacted before she could think, wrapping her legs around his pelvis and shifting the weight up and off. She rolled him over, putting her on top. He grabbed for her, catching her wrists before she could tear him apart with her fists, so she did the next best thing and rammed the hard flat of her forehead into the sift of his nose. Blood gushed. His nose was very broken.

Sakura pulled away, moving away to stand ready until he could stand again. She could feel her heart in her chest and took deep breaths. Her throat was dry; she wanted water. The fight felt like forever, but the three minutes had just passed, putting the fight at five minutes long. She glanced at a clock. Six minutes and eight seconds.

Hidan began to laugh.

"What the hell is so funny?" Sakura snarled, feeling unnerved by the sound. "You can barely stand."

Hidan didn't move, didn't even shift from his position on the floor, but when he chuckled it shook his whole body. He had a deep voice that might have been attractive if he wasn't trying to kill her. "I was having so much fun, I forgot to keep track of the time. They told me not to hurt you, but you've come this far." His left arm twitched. Sakura noticed she had left it at a odd angle. "What will you look like when you bleed, bitch?"

"Stay down," Sakura all but growled.

Hidan laughed again, and this time it shook more than just his own body. Sakura felt her whole world tilt. Something had changed between them. She felt a snap and had to take a step back. Hidan's body was turning black and white. Wearing only a pair of skinny, black pants, Sakura could watch as his skin began to color black and white in the outline of a skeleton over his body. When he stood, Sakura could see clearly how he had taken on a Grim Reaper-like appearance, with black skin and white bone-like markings. It was terrifying all on its own, but then Sakura saw how the bruises were gone, his nose was straightened again, his arm that had been broken before was mended, and even the shallow cuts on his face from where her nails caught him, were gone.

'Also he's a sick pervert who likes pain and has an in-human regeneration ability. That's his main enhancement.'

"Fuck," Sakura breathed, feeling her throat cry out again for water.

Hidan roared with laughed and it shook the whole stadium. People were crazy in the stand and Sakura wanted to strangle them for it. She could already hear Temari and the girls from the side trying to call out to her. If she bothered to listen she would hear how they begged her to tap out, to give up, but she didn't listen, so she didn't tap out, even though she knew she should have.

Hidan's wild yet distinctive purple eyes saw nothing but here. "Don't look so surprised. I know you knew about this."

"Never seen it before," Sakura answered, still stunned by the transformation.

Hidan looked away from her, breaking the spell. Along the side of the ring there was a wall of weapons that had opened up. He picked up something that was both red and black, and when he turned around to swing it, Sakura saw that he wielded a Triple-Bladed Scythe tipped in red. Was that to hid the blood?

"I'm really revved up now, and I wanna go all out. You think you can match me?" Hidan taunted, swinging again. "I might kill you, no matter what they say.

Sakura skipped backwards to the opposite wall and found her favorite pair of knuckles with the diamond vein that ripped without mercy. She fell into a stance.

Hidan roared a laugh in response. "Sure, if that's how you want it to be."

It wasn't how Sakura wanted it to be, but she didn't feel like quitting and she saw little other choice. The clock behind Hidan's head said they had been in the ring together ten minutes. That was long for him. She licked her lips, tasting thirst in her throat.

Damn.

He swung, and his reach was impressive. Sakura didn't have to be anywhere near him for his weapon to do some damage. There was a chain attached to the end he held on to in order to swing his weapon to greater distances. He could pick her off with long range attacks when all her own best moves were exclusively short range. Without moving, he chased her around the field, biting the carpet whenever she got close to being caught. The crowd was wild, but not wild enough to drown out his laughter.

Sakura couldn't stop cursing in her head. She wanted to tear his throat out. Try coming back from a severed spine, bastard! She rolled towards another wall of weapons and grabbed something long. A mace. Turning it over in hand, Sakura timed it just right and slammed the weapon down on the blades of Hidan's scythe. It did little to no damage, but it slowed him down enough for her to move in closer.

She tried to knock the shaft from his hands, but his whole arm jerked and his body followed. He had a death grip on his weapon Sakura wouldn't be able to break, so she went for his kidney spot with her wicked knuckles. This time when she landed her hits, Hidan couldn't help but cry out in pain as the black and white designs receded from the spot where bruises bloomed. He didn't falter or fall, but at least she knew she was doing something to him.

But any damage she thought she had accomplished seemed swept up in an instant as the black and white design seeped back over the bruises, healing them. Any damage she did would be healed. It was like she hadn't done anything at all.

Not fair, her brain screamed, feeding into her frenzy. She understood how difficult it would be to take down Hidan now and why he was so feared. How had he lost in the past to anyone? Was he truly unbeatable? How could she win.

Sakura caught sight of Temari and Hanabi at the edge of the ring, looking worried. They wanted her to tap out, to give up and end the match. Something inside of her roared at the thought, violent to the suggestion. She would rather be struck down and knocked unconscious then known as a quitter.

She struck faster and harder and in a variety of different places. She could tell she was doing damage, and she could tell him regeneration thing wasn't a limitless ability. Each punch he healed from healed slower by a fraction of a second. She was tiring out, and her throat was as thick as cotton, but Hidan was starting to take the damage. She could win this. She could make it through. She could do what no one else believed her capable of. She could do it. She could win! She could-

He roared, smashing his body into her's and knocking her onto her back. She hit the mat with a thud, seeing stars burst behind her eyes. He loomed over her, a skeletal grim reaper with blood on his face and madness in his eyes. She saw him and it hurt her somewhere in her heart. She was so thirsty. She wanted a drink, she wanted a-

The crowd erupted in anger, surprise, and excitement.

Sakura tasted something wet in her throat that hadn't been there before. Something like iron and syrup.

She coughed.

Blood.

"Damn it Hidan!" a man roared from the sidelines.

Sakura felt fuzzy and tired and heavy. There was so much shouting around her and she wanted to drink but she couldn't because there was blood in her throat. She was choking on her own blood because Hidan's scythe was wedged perfectly into her center, the first blade between her breasts and the third tearing through her navel.

Someone else was furious from the sidelines too. Sakura couldn't hear well enough to know who. Temari? Wrong side of the ring. Maybe Sasori?

'He killed me.'

She heard a sound and moved her face just enough to see her opponent laughing. His head was thrown back, his throat exposed, his body heaving with the sound. Hidan was laughing at her death. He had killed her and he was laughing about it.

Sakura burned with anger. She couldn't remember having a throat that was thirsty, or thoughts that were wandering. A whiteness descended over her mind and she felt a flower bloom on her face above her eyes.

She was out of her body, watching her skin break out in black patterns stemming from the diamond on her forehead. The vines jagged across her body and expanded, growing fatter till they overlapped at her body was nearly all black. Her body heaved with the transformation, on hand reaching for the shaft of the scythe. She ripped it free from her body and the wounds gasped wide before seizing up and shrinking like silent mouths after a long scream.

Hidan wasn't laughing any more. The crowd was oddly quiet.

Free, she stood again, her eyes white and her fangs ready. She was going to rip him apart, starting with the arm he used to swing his weapon. Sakura was a white hot bolt that severed his arm at the elbow in one snap, drenching the floor in blood. Hidan screamed and Sakura was on him, her teeth reaching for his throat to rip apart. She would end him.

He threw her off and kicked her hard in the stomach where she still felt a ghost of pain. Sakura stood, ready to launch again when around her the room shook.

Sakura risked a glance sideways when she saw Hidan look away, and saw the clouds growing out from between the seats, enveloping the stands of spectators. It was leaking out of VIP boxes as well. Sakura tensed as it drew closer. She had nowhere to run as it came in on her from every side, washing over her in a hue of gray. There were vents up above the ring that started to hiss with pink smoke.

Hidan seized and fell to his knees seconds before Sakura, but she was already descending when his head hit the floor. It was a drug. Had it been because he tried to kill her and things got out of hand? No, that wouldn't explain why the audience was getting gassed as well. The setup was too elaborate to not be pre planned, but everyone looked surprised.

She heard Hidan cursing and knew he was as immobile as she was, but not unconscious. There were boots on the mat and she saw the bodies rushing out. Men in masks with long nozzles that filtered air rushed out. Out of the handful of them, one reached for her, turning her over to show off her front where the wounds were still pink and puckered like angry welts. She saw his hands trace the scars but couldn't feel it. She was numb all over.

"She's still alive," the man at her side exclaimed. "She's going to live."

"Of course she is. That's what she was designed for."

She was numb but she felt cold all throughout her body on a deeper, spiritual level where her soul ached with anger and terror. She wanted to look up and see him, but her neck wouldn't bend. Still, when he knelt down, she recognized his hands well enough, even if his head was just out of view.

Kabuto brushed his ungloved thumb over the raised flesh with reverence, taking his time to feel the sealed wound. He hummed deep in his throat and Sakura wanted to cry or pull away. When he bent down to kiss the wound through her navel, there was no mistaking it. Her captor was over her again. She remembered him.

"But is she still good? Orochimaru is already angry with us for going to such lengths. She's worth a lot less if she can't bree-."

Kabuto swung his fist out and the man went down. A third member stiffened, but didn't say anything against the attack. Kabuto narrowed his eyes as this member. "Get the truck ready. We'll take her and leave." Kabuto then turned his eyes to the man on his back, leveled with the floor. "She is worth more than your efforts will ever amount to, so think more carefully about speaking out against the cumulation of a decade of research. Wipe yourself off, we're leaving."

They were talking about her like she was a science project…like she was a thing.

The man Kabuto knocked down crawled back up and reached to grab for Sakura, meaning to carry her, but Kabuto stopped him with a look. Taking her into his arms he folded her up to his chest and turned. Sakura could see over his shoulder where Hidan watched her with his arms still pulsing blood from where she severed it. He looked like he straining against his limits to break free and stand but had no more luck moving than she did when she tried.

Kabuto rolled his shoulder and Sakura's face fell back closer to his and he stretched his neck so that his nose was in her hair. "You don't have to look at him anymore. He can't hurt you now."

If she could, Sakura would have shivered at his words.

They were to the edge of the mat and the assistant was already climbing down when a needle stood out from his neck, choking him. He fell limp a second later. Kabuto cursed, jumping back to avoid one meant for him.

"I expected better from you Kabuto. You've grown sloppy to forget my immunity to your toxins. Who was it who taught you all that you know about poison?"

Kabuto pressed Sakura closer to his chest, plastering on a sweetly fake smile. "Sasori, how nice to see you again. I'm sorry, but I'm not here to chat about old time's sake. I'm sure you understand."

"Put her down." Sasori's words left no room for argument or negotiation. She couldn't see his face from where her own was trapped, but Sakura could guess what his expression was like.

"I see no reason to do that. I remember cutting you out of our last transaction." He turned his face into Sakura hair, putting his lips close to her ear. "Did you know that, Sakura? Did you know that Sasori was the one who ordered you like a piece of food. He's the one who saw you in that cage and said 'that one' and paid me for my experiments to upgrade you so that you could keep up with him. I told him you were a volunteer, but he would have to be blind and stupid to believe that."

"Kabuto!"

His lips kissed the shell of her ear, whispering the rest. "He was the one who wanted you to be made into what you are. If you should blame anyone, it should be him, not me."

"Let her go."

Kabuto's voice was cold, but still evenly paced, like he was making an effort to sound civil when all he wanted to do was hiss and roar out his words like something less than human. "Not a chance, she's worth too much to my research, not that you every appreciated my craft. I'm taking her back. You have no claim on her."

Sakura could feel something tingling at the ends of her fingertips and knew feeling was coming back to her. Soon she would be able to move again. Kabuto must have felt her twitch because his smile slipped out of place and his eyebrow twitched. Sasori tensed, opposite of the man in glasses.

"I really should be going. If you don't want your friends killed, step out of the way."

Sasori produced a knife that was coated and ready to kill. "You're a fool to assume they mean anything to me."

The redhead lunged and Kabuto had to roll away, dropping Sakura along the way when Sasori's blade came too close. It was over quickly, with the two exchanging a handful of blows before two oto guards in masks came up beside Kabuto to drag him away, saying something about backup arriving. Kabuto screamed in protest at them, but must have gone with them since his voice faded out. He wasn't dead, meaning he would be back. Sakura turned her head, feeling needles all through her neck where the muscles tensed.

Things were still hazy thanks to the leftover from the gas, but Sasori was close enough to crouch down beside her and reacher her. She felt him pull her towards him and let out a gasp when the sensation was too sharp. Her body was returning from numbness and everything stung. Sasori froze, moving himself closer to her instead of pulling her towards him.

Her hair was a mess of sweaty strands stuck to her face for him to brush away. Even after cutting it, the sections she left untouched were long enough for him to rung his fingers through. "I'm sorry we let him in here. We were careless to assume a direct attack wasn't possible."

"Mmmm." Sakura didn't know if she could even form words properly.

"I promise you, Kabuto won't live much longer."

Her tongue felt heavy, but she forced it to move. "He told me…you… you picked me." Sasori's stroking stilled, his fingers still tangled in her hair. It stung, but Sakura forced her eyes up, looking him in the face. Her words were slow and evenly paced when she spoke. "He told me… said you were the one who… wanted me as a thing to be bought."

"And you believe him?"

His voice was natural-light, even. Sakura had a hard time gauging his reaction for any sign of what he might be thinking or feeling as a result of her words. Did he feel guilty, ashamed, unaffected, or something else? Her eyes hurt too much, she had to let her lids drop.

"That thing… Deidara said when we met, he meant…you knew about me because… you were going to buy me."

"We're not in the business of buying or selling slaves. That was never our-my intention. I wanted a helper, yes, but one with the capabilities to handle Akatsuki work."

"I don't want to work for you."

His fingers rubbed circles into her scalp, trailing from her crown to the base of her skull, soothing her. "And that is your choice….but volunteers are supposed to be willing workers. Kabuto wouldn't have chosen you if you weren't someone willing to work."

Sakura wanted to push him away, but she was impossibly tired. His fingers were massaging her to sleep. She was already exhausted from her fight with Hidan. It had take so much out of her and she was thirsty and hungry and in need of sleep. She opened her eyes for a short second to get a blurry picture of his face before closing them again. "You were going to use me," she choked out. His fingers were at the base of her neck, still kneeing small circles. "I am not a thing."

She could feel more now, and a lot of the sensations returning to her were variations of pain. Her back was a blister of hurt, especially between the shoulder blades. From what she could see, her black skin was starting to bleed back to a pale peach tone in places. Sasori still rubbed circles into her body and she felt like curling up inside of one. She wanted to sleep now. She was so heavy.

Hidan's body twitched where it had fallen. She saw him stand and reach for his severed arm, glaring at her direction before turning and walking away, already able to stand and move after the gasses. Behind him there were bodies. One climbed up onto the elevated ring and ran past him, approaching Sasori. Sakura recognized Shisui from his shoes before her eyes stopped working.

Seconds later her consciousness drifted.

* * *

Deidara sat back, watching his partner brood over a workbench with nothing on it. Normally Sasori would like to busy himself in his free time with construction, but when he was in particularly foul moods, nothing was made. When he tried to make things in his anger, most of his materials ended up flying at people's heads.

"It is creepy, you know. Anyone else would have thought you bought her to be a sex slave or something like the other dicks from Providence Road."

"I've killed perverts from Providence Road," Sasori growled, knowing that Deidara's claim didn't hold up.

Out of all the members in the Akatsuki, Sasori was probably the only one with such a abysmally low sex drive. But what he lacked in the wanting of sex he made up for in the desire for companionship. He had thought it over. Is she wanted sex from him he was willing to oblige, but that wasn't why he wanted her beside him. He wanted to feel whole.

Deidara absently picked at his nails. "It makes sense though…one thing does."

"What?" Normally Sasori wouldn't have responded, but they were talking about the only thing he could think about, so it didn't make a difference.

"She's super sexy to me, and it's not like something you can tell just from watching a video. Yeah, she's hot an all, good eye, but she's attractive for more than that. Kabuto said she could breed."

Sasori looked back over his shoulder, glaring at the blond. "And that makes her more attractive to you?"

"Hell yeah. Pheromones are super strong when the woman has an oven. The animal genes I was paired with want nothing more than to make a mating bond with her. Don't hurt that we're both avian in nature. We're super compatible."

"If you touch her I will skin you alive and burn what is left with acid and salt."

Deidara hummed, inspecting his nails and knowing better than to fear his partner in this state. "She's almost worth it, but I'm not the one you should be worried about." Deidara stood and moved to stand behind the couch. "Did you see the Uchiha after the match, not Itachi, his cousin. That kid has it bad, and there is no saying who else might find her worth the pursuit. Us monsters are programed to propagate."

"She was meant to be a match for me. We…I was the one who first felt the connection." Sasori's hands began to tremble and he had to grab hold of the edge of his workbench to keep them steady. He wanted to hurl something. "She was meant to be for me, to be mine."

The memory was old and a little faded, but while the images had faded the feelings from that time had not. He recalled with vivid clarity how he felt when he saw her sleeping. Something dead inside his chest twitched for the first time. There wasn't a name for it, and there wasn't any reason for it, but he knew there was something there when he was around her. He was overcome with the urge to press her to his side and kiss her crown and call her 'dearest' in her ear. He could envision it all when he reached through the bars and touched her face.

He would be good for her, he would be a blessing in her terrified life. He saw old scars, one large enough it was a wonder it hadn't killed her to the side of her stomach. Claws and fang scars made their mark on her body as well. She was no stranger to danger, but she would have to be stronger. He didn't want her defenseless in his hellish world.

Deidara's tone was dry, cutting into Sasori's memories."She's not a thing and you can't predict who she might want to mate with. For all you know, she might have a taste for fellow avian. If she does there isn't anything you can say against it. She's a free citizen and a member of the Harpies. Konan will crucify you if you try to enslave her now."

"I wouldn't force-" Sasori growled, slamming dual fists down in his anger. "That isn't what I meant."

Deidara's chuckle with mirthless. "Than try seducing her like the rest of us. I'm going to go see Pein about that contract to demolish the Druid Tower. Shisui's already tried sucking up to Temari and the harpies. Good luck, un."

* * *

Sakura didn't dream, but on the cusp of waking, when she still felt like she hadn't fully returned to her body from wherever her soul drifted when it slept, she thought she remembered things. Black things, gold things, heavy things, red things, cold things.

They told her she slept for nearly two days. When she woke she was back with the harpies, but they were not inside the tower they had taken over and renamed 'The Nest.' No, they were somewhere different.

Sakura's bed was wide and low to the ground. At the other corner she saw a small body, and when she pulled back the sheets she saw Hanabi's head. Knowing she wasn't alone, some of the tension eased from her rigid frame. She winced at the feeling from her back.

The room was bare but large, like a studio with naked walls and haphazardly acquired furniture. There was a mirror leaning up against the wall with a crack running down the center. Sakura tugged her shirt off in front of the mirror and turned, already feeling the growth. Two cocoon shaped bulges grew from her back, each covered in a thinly stretched layer of skin. They were ugly and grotesque to look at. The skin was so thinly stretched that she could see the blood running through veins underneath.

Sakura pressed one and winced. It felt like it looked. She would have to hide them, but she couldn't wear anything too tight or constricting. They were sensitive and she suspected that they would only grow more sensitive as time went on. She left her black bra on and found the jacket with the slits to wear over her bra. It was loose enough that it covered the bulges but didn't agitate them too much.

Next to the bed was a cardboard box filled with old clothing materials that must have belonged to one of the Harpies, since it was all the sort of style they liked. Sakura found a pair of silver high waisted shorts that fit and stepped into them.

"You're awake."

Sakura looked up and was surprised to see Konan standing in the doorway with no door. The older woman wore a midriff baring top that exposed her pierced navel and matching navy colored skin tight pants. A sleeveless vest stretching all the way to the floor drifted behind her like a light thing caught in the wind whenever she moved. If she had wings they would have hid under that.

"Where are we?" Sakura stood, kicking the box away with her foot. "I don't remember anything after…Sasori took me from Kabuto. What happened. I must have blacked out."

"You almost died, that's what happened."

Sakura felt her arm and grabbed the width of her elbow. "From Hidan?"

"Yes, he nearly killed you. But like him, it seems you were equipped with advanced regeneration, which is what you saw when your body turned black. It saved you at first, but then the black marks on your body started to fade and when they were nearly gone an hour and a half later you went into cardiac arrest and nearly scared they shit out of everyone." Konan's eyes sparkled with a air of mischief. "It was highly amusing to see so many of my boys get that worked up."

The blue haired woman looked to Hanabi sleeping in the corner, close to the edge of the shabby mattress and nodded to a far window, walking there herself. Sakura followed a half second later. Outside was a cityscape of high black towers, smoke, and neon lights. If there was a sun it was far away and trapped behind one of those impressive black towers. The city seemed to stretch on forever.

"This is NewDestruction."

Sakura pulled her eyes away from the window to take in Konan's frame. With electric blue hair and the simple stud piercing under her lower lip she was edgy just like the city. Yet Sakura saw a vein of silver elegance in the way she carried herself with a rod straight back, arched neck, and lashes long enough to catch lesser men. Her eyes were cold marbles that shifted without warning, but always with purpose. Sakura felt dwarfed by the older beauty.

"There is more to it than what you see here. We are one of the many domed cities scattered throughout the continent, but ours is the only one that matters, because ours is the only one we rule."

Sakura touched the window and felt cold glass under her fingertips. "Why did you bring me here, Konan? What happened to Sasori?"

"You're in our tower. The others are all secluded to lower levels. Deidara is the only one who lives on the floor above us. I invited the Harpies here to nest until Kabuto and his men could be apprehended, but it looks like he fled to a neighboring dome, which means he is outside of our reach." Konan closed her eyes, turning her face away from the glass. "But that is to be expected when you destroy all their properties in New Destruction. They had nowhere else to go."

"I knew you weren't friendly, but it sounds like you're bloodthirsty now."

"Some of us, more than others would like to see Oto wiped off the face of this earth, and now we have an excuse to pursue justice." Sakura remembered that Konan was a former Harpy, just like Temari and Hanabi. That meant Konan came out of a Oto lab with the others. How hard must it have been to hold onto her anger and watch as her new people did business with her captors?"

"Why would you ever work with people who did what they did to you?" Sakura heard herself ask.

If it was forbidden territory in conversation Konan didn't let it appear so. "What they did was terrible, but no more terrible than my life before becoming a thing for Oto. I hate them for what they did to me, but…" the corner of her lips quirked. "I'm happy now that I've found Nageto. If I look at my life as a whole, what I endured was worth it. I'd rather forget my life before and during those Oto years, but other than that, I can not complain."

Sakura felt a headache when she tried to remember anything beyond the night she woke up in the trash alley. Bits had been revealed to her, bits triggered by the sight of Kabuto, but she had absolutely no memory of her life before being taken. They wrote things on her file that didn't make sense. She must have been making a face, because when she looked up, Konan was frowning at her.

Sakura shook her head. "I remembered things from when…I was with Kabuto, but there are gaps. There is a lot of…white space in my memories. Is that normal."

"Some memory loss is normal, yes, but much of it will return in time. Have you remembered anything since your recovery?"

"Just a flash or bit when I saw Kabuto and the other Oto guard, but those were triggered. I can't remember anything on my own of my life before my abduction. I don't know if I can believe what they wrote about me being something from outside the domes. That doesn't make sense if what you said is true, about the air being too polluted to breathe."

Konan regarded Sakura for a moment before turning away and heading back towards the bed where Hanabi slept. There was another box Sakura had overlooked that Konan tugged out. This box was filled with shoes and boots. "Find something worth wearing and meet me on the roof. I'm eating there with Pein and Itachi while my husband is in a meeting. I think my brother in law would be delighted to meet you, and Itachi is pleasant enough company."

"And Hanabi…?"

Konan waved off the question. "She insisted on being close to you. But she will join the others when she wakes. Pay her no mind." With those parting words, Konan drifted out, gliding more than walking.

Sakura took a step, but felt the cold of the floor and remembered what she had to do before following Konan up to the roof.

Shoes were harder to find a fit for than the shorts had been. There were a few pairs she liked, but some of them didn't fit or didn't come with their match. Eventually, she settled for a pair of black high heels with silver spokes on the heel and a silver tip over the toe area. There was a knife spring loaded into the toe of the left shoe. She tested it out, clicking her heels together once. She was satisfied with the immediate spring of metal slicing through. Tapping her toe down, she pushed the knife back in to place and then tested the reach of her leg. Heels weren't always the most practical, but in this case, she was deadly. (Also they made her ass look fine as hell.)

Sakura ran a hand through the half of her hair that still could fall in front of her face, combing it back with her fingers. There was a box with odds and ends standing next to the door. One of the things inside the box was a doll with pins shaped like wings in her hair. Sakura pulled the pins out and used them to keep her hair down pinned back. She didn't have a mirror to check her work, but assumed it was fine. It felt good, and that was all that mattered to her.

The stairs were easy enough to find. She assumed the roof would be just as simple to locate. She wasn't wrong. The stairs led her right to the roof, ending in a landing cut off by a heavy metal door she had to heave to open. With her arm strength it wasn't an issue, but she could guess that lesser men might find it difficult to access the roof.

Getting the door open she sucked in a breath, tasting thin air and relishing it. It wasn't windy, but the atmosphere was different outside, sharper with an edge of danger. Sakura stepped out onto the roof, already knowing she would love it. There were a few structures to block her view. Around a gray cinder wall she saw the corner of a table looking like it was chiseled from smooth black stone and lit with fiber optic down the legs. Two males sat at the table while Konan stood by the railing where Sakura wanted to be.

The first male looked up and she knew without introduction that she was looking at Itachi Uchiha, there was too much of his cousin in his features for the male not to be an Uchiha. Itachi had the same alabaster skin, same dark hair, and the same cold black eyes framed thick with lashes. While his cousin sported curls, Itachi's hair was long and straight like fresh spun silk.

He wore a double breasted jacket with a collar that came up to nearly cover the bottom half of his face. His trousers were black and tight enough to tuck into his military style combat boots.

He shifted in his seat to face her and his partner at the table noticed.

Pein, that's what Konan had called the other man who Sakura noticed. Sakura had never seen anyone before she could compare Pein to, he was a creature all his own with strong, chiseled features and storm gray eyes encircled in multiple rings around his iris. His gaze was intense, it made her feel like drowning in a thunderstorm. His hair was colored titian and styled away from his face, showing off all the metal pierced through his skin. His ears were thoroughly outfitted, while the bridge of his nose sported three pairs of studs lining either side. Two more spikes pierced the underside of his lip, all colored black.

He wasn't dressed like Itachi, or like how she expected to see him dressed if his face was anything to go by. He wore what looked like a suit with a buttoned down gray shirt and black print vest that matched his trimmed trousers. His shoes were tipped with gold toes to match the chains connecting the lapel ends of his collar. Without a jacket, he had rolled up his sleeves and Sakura saw colorful tattoos peeking through.

Both males looked to her, but it was Pein who spoke first. A cigarette dangled between his limp fingers, burning blue smoke. "You're the harpy girl. Have you rested well?"

"Well enough," Sakura replied easily enough, glancing between Pein, Itachi, and then Konan who had just turned and was beginning to walk back towards them.

"Good," Pein murmured, closing his eyes and replacing the smoking stock on his lips. He took a long drag and when he exhaled, the smoke rolling from his lips were indigo colored.

"Take a sea, Sakura," Konan said, pulling out a third chair in front of an empty plate. "Eat something."

"You must be famished," Itachi said, speaking for the first time, coating her ears with the sound of velvet. His voice was sin and she wanted to hear it again. Hearing him speak made her heart jump. Maybe Itachi knew this, because he smiled rakishly, tipping his glass tumbler in her direction. Now she wished she would have looked in that mirror.

She took the seat Konan pulled out for her and scooted in, hooking her ankles behind the chair away her eyes went to the steak bits piled on a serving dish in the center of the table, accented by vegetables so fresh is was a mystery how anything so vibrant grew in a city so cold and hard. She felt her mouth salivate and looked up to Konan for permission before taking the serving fork and speaking a hearty slab of steak for her own plate. She piled vegetables into the spaces left cut a chunk off her stake and let the taste take her somewhere high. It was glorious.

"All our food comes from outside the dome, that's why it's tolerable," Itachi said, watching her with a chuckle underneath his words. His eyes were dark with hidden mirth.

"What else is there to eat?" Pein asked over a yawn. "Soldier packs? Are they still serving those things to the masses?"

"Please," Konan sighed, rounding the table and sitting down across from Sakura. "They're able to grow their own food in the terrariums a little at a time. It's the meat that's rare, but if you have the DNA of a carnivore like so many of our boys, it's a necessity to have."

"You've almost made me hungry again," Itachi murmured, tracing the edge of his plate. There were stains in the center from where his food had been minutes before. His eyes raised to meet Sakura's. "It is good, isn't it?"

"Perfect," Sakura forced out, covering her mouth with her hand so he wouldn't see what she was chewing. His eyes were too pretty to be so fixated on her. Yeah, she was flattered, but another part of her wanted to hide and pretend he wasn't prettier than her.

"The food is fine, but what of your injuries?" Pein asked, breaking whatever Itachi had spun between her and him. "You look whole, but to what extent?" She saw there was an eye tattooed into the palm of his left hand where he held his cigarette between loose fingers. Like his own eyes, the tattoo on his palm had many rings encircling the centered iris.

"What extent?" She felt a single brow raise in query. "And how would you have me answer that? I'm as fine as I was before any of my fights if that means something to you. Why ask me that before even introducing yourself?"

Pein eyebrows raised. "You do not know who I am? You haven't figured it out?"

Sakura took another bite of vegetables, chewing and swallowing before speaking. "I'm not dense enough to miss out on your name, but it's still proper manners to introduce yourself and not let reputation always proceed you."

Pein inclined his head, smiling a crooked smile. "Forgive me. We forget ourselves. You may call me Pein." He gestured to Itachi.

Nodding, the dark haired man added, "And I am Itachi. It's a pleasure to meet you finally, Sakura." He leaned back in seat, crossing his hands over his lap.

"Although, it feels as if we've met before, or at the very least we've known each other before this. I've watched you work, and while it was impressive, I think it was your fight with Hidan that was most entertaining. You looked so natural in the ring. Did you know you couldn't die?"

Sakura winced, remembering the ripped feeling of three years through her stomach. "No." She hadn't known Hidan would be so eager to end her life, or that he would be as impressively skilled as he was. Yes, she anticipated him before stronger than her, but the way he killed her had been something else. If she hadn't been able to regenerate, she wouldn't be sitting down to dinner with either male or Konan. "I was just as shocked as everyone else, but I'm grateful."

"It's a rare gift. Not many survive the process," Pein murmured, looking down at the smoke drifting upwards from between his fingers. He took another drag, the breath curling out in deep Azul waves this time. "I've only heard of one person other than Hidan possessing such a gift. You're a rare monster, Sakura dear."

Sakura lowered her eyes, eating more of her dinner and reaching for the water in her glass to wash it all down. Konan sighed from across the table, rolling her eyes. "You're a ripe peach, you know that, brother? Why would you say that to a pretty young girl?" She reached over and flicked her brother in law on the nose and Itachi chuckled. It was a deep rumble that made the hairs on the back of Sakura's neck stand up on end.

"What is it you want with me?" she asked, setting her fork and knife down. "If you're going to ask what Sasori and Deidara asked the answer hasn't changed."

"Are you always this straightforward?" Itachi asked with another rakish smile. "Maybe we just want your company." She wanted to snap at him to cut it out. She didn't like how he made her heart pinch in her chest. He was too pretty for his own good.

"Don't tease her, Itachi," Konan grumbled, sounding exhausted. "Poor dove has already been put through enough since waking up. You don't need to add to her trials." Leaning over Konan locked eyes with Sakura, whispering the next bit. "Careful with him. He's an ice prince, but he's still a major heartbreaker."

"Konan…"Itachi cut in, sounding upset. Konan just rolled her eyes, not minding his tone.

"It' fine," Pein said, stealing Sakura's attention away from the feuding pair. "We're the gods of New Destruction, and we rule as we please. You're a new thing in our city, a powerful figure that could be a potential friend or foe, depending on how we play our cards. We've held good relations with the Harpies thanks to Konan, but that doesn't mean some bridges aren't shaky. We'd like to know you better."

"Make me a potential ally, not a threat," Sakura added, reaching for more veggies. She felt like she could eat a cow whole. She hadn't noticed how hungry she had been until she started eating. It was almost like there was something in her that kept her from stopping. She was too hungry.

"Does that make sense?" Pein asked, still watching her.

"I think so. Sakura speared green beans with her fork. "But I can't tell you I'm comfortable with the idea of being originally ordered like a to go meal by one of your own. I haven't decided how to feel about that, or even if I should feel anything about that. I don't have the memories to be bitter about it, but the idea is enough to turn my insides."

"I don't believe Sasori meant anything nefarious or objectionable when he did what he did, however, he acted on his own and his actions do not reflect Akatsuki as a whole. What he did we do not condone."

"Even if I was a volunteer?"

This time it was Itachi's turn to laugh. Sakura swiveled her eyes to him and he calmed. "No one volunteers for what you went though if you're able to regenerate and sprout wings from avian DNA. Even those mad or desperate enough to attempt one know it would be a fool's dream to try anything further. Do not feel the need to forgive Sasori. He has what is due him by your scorn."

"I hadn't meant to scorn him or reject him like that. I just…didn't want to be around him until I had my thoughts organized or figured out at the least," Sakura said.

"That could take some time," Pein drawled out, gazing at the humble stub of his smoking stick. Tapping it once, aquamarine ash fell into a metallic dish on the table. "Regardless, it is irrelevant to us. Forgive him or don't, we are not Sasori and he is not the say all and end all of Akatsuki. I'd still like to offer you employment within the organization, even if it's part time."

Before Pein could move, Itachi pulled a chip out of one of the pockets lining the left side of his front. Like the one Sasori gave her, it was small enough to fit in her palm, but on the one side there was what looked like a red and white fan set against a wall of fire. On the opposite side was his barcode. "If you feel unnerved by contacting Sasori please use this instead."

"Also, all the Harpy girls know how to get in contact with Konan," Pein added, discarding his used cigarette into the ash tray. What little smoke was left in it came out as a pale blue gray color. "And since two of them are headed up the stairwell now I think it would be safe to assume they would be willing to aid you if you asked."

"I'm sorry we weren't able to show you around more. This is only one of our residences, and it's not much to boast of, but it has a fine garage. I think it was Deidara mentioned you liked motor vehicles."

Sakura really wanted to hear Itachi say 'motor vehicles' again with his velvet tenor, but didn't dare voice her request, choosing to cover up her blush by stuffing her face full of all the veggies left on her plate. She could hear footsteps in the stairwell and thanked the powers that be for the distraction. If she didn't know better, she would have sworn Itachi was actually trying to subtly entice her with all the little details of her person. The way his hair fell over her shoulders was even attractive.

"Sakura!" It was Hanabi in the doorway, but Hana was behind her, pushing the door open. Sakura looked up, the back of her hand over her mouth to hide the shape of her cheeks packed with food. Swallowing, she dragged his fist across her lips and stood. The basil dressing was sticky on the back of her hand.

Sakura took a step, walking towards the other girls but Itachi's hand reached out to grab her around the wrist, his fingers reaching to encircle her wrist. She could feel the pads of his fingertips on the lines of her veins, soft and teasing. Her breath was short and her eyes were wide and her thoughts were a mess. "If…" he began with his voice like sin. "You encounter an other troubles, come here. This a safe haven for you when your nest is targeted."

Itachi withdrew his hand, slowly, gradually, swiping his fingers over the top of her hand, through the stain of basil dressing. His eyes were hazy, caught in a thought far away as he turned his face from her and lifted his fingers to his lips, licking away the dressing as sensually as he had when he released her hand.

It was windy, but her body burned like a furnace. Sakura was in danger. She needed to turn and leave before he did something that really destroyed her. She was too new and too young to this new world of destruction and black towers to be feeling like a lamb under a wolf's fangs. A lamb that wanted to be devoured full, wholly, and completely.

Sakura looked up, finding herself across the roof, in front of Hana and Hanabi, the former of which was watching her with an expression that was guarded and cold. Hanabi reached out and grabbed Sakura's arm, tugging on it. Saying nothing more, Sakura ducked her head and followed the younger of the two girls down the stairwell, keeping her eyes from wandering for fear of seeing anyone else. Hana's expression seemed to inspire a sense of shame and Sakura couldn't understand why. Was she embarrassed to be caught talking to Itachi? Had she done something wrong?

She heard something like metal on metal echo above her and she looked up before she knew what she was doing. It was a knee jerk reaction, something left over from her survival instincts. Her body was taut, ready to react, but when she saw his pale face she was stone. Hanabi paused on the steps beside Sakura, looking up as well even though Hana didn't pause.

Sakura still didn't know how to feel about Sasori, but she knew without doubt that when he looked at her like that she felt unraveled. Sasori was connected to her, as she was to him. There was no denying it. She wanted to abandon the bonds forged with needles and chains, but there was history there that made something between them. She could feel the history of all his stares and all his thoughts when he looked at her.

"I need to get out of here," Sakura breathed, feeling choked.

Her body was still too hot and the way Sasori stared at her did nothing to calm or cool her. If anything, she felt even more agitated and bothered. If she had wings she knew they would be all ruffled, curling around to shield her face from that gaze.

* * *

Back on the rooftop, Konan took her things and moved away from the men to stand at the far end of the roof where the wind was most violent, coming off a sharp edge and roaring loud in her ears. She loved being lost in the wild of the wind, and didn't mind how it whipped at her face and dragged her hair out to dance and snap back and forth. She was lost to the idea of riding that wind, leaving the boys to themselves.

Pein reached into his vest pocket and pulled out a shallow metal flask that clicked open via a latch at the top. Inside was a collection of rolled cigarettes, each marked with a simple colored brand that predicted the color of their smoke. He fingered the green one, wondering if he burned it would it look like her eyes? Doubtful. That shade of green wasn't reproduced so easily. Still, he selected the green stick and closed the rest away, replacing them in his pocket.

The lighter he left on the table was shaped like a demon with many eyes. He used it to light up and birth billows of fresh, moss colored smoke. No, he doubted any part of his cigarette would mimic her eyes, no matter how much they reminded him of her.

When Itachi moved to drink from his glass Pein remembered his annoyance with the Uchiha from before. Normally so level headed and reliable, Itachi had acted out of character in front of their guest. No matter how attracted he was to her, he should have at least showed some manners. The way Itachi behaved was unseemly.

"What is it?" Itachi drawled, staring into his glass. "You're making a face at me."

"I'm disappointed with your behavior."

Itachi almost smirked. "That's a first."

"Were you at all aware of your behaviors or had your senses taken leave? It was painfully obvious you were wanting to mate with her. It made me uncomfortable just to watch your display. I can only imagine how distraught the poor girl will feel leaving here."

"What makes you think she didn't enjoy the attention?" Itachi asked with narrowed eyes. "She's nearly ready to bloom. It's all in the air, her scent full of vitality."

"To take advantage of a chemistry flaw she doesn't even understand is criminal."

"Maybe she genuinely thinks I am attractive. Is it so difficult to concede that point?" Itachi placed his glass down at pushed it away from his side of the table towards the center. "I was encouraging her. Something you might stand to learn a bit if you want to even approach her attention as anything other than a mound of talking flesh."

"It's called having self respect."

"Sometimes there isn't room for anything else in your life if you hold onto your pride." Itachi smirked, standing up. "I'm willing to make those sacrifices."

"Need I remind you who approves the mission requests around here. If Nageto were to hear of your over zealous interests, I doubt he would assign you any mission with her."

Itachi walk halfway to the door when he turned his head to call back over his shoulder. "He already has. Kisame and I are taking Shisui to the Tanzanite dome in a week's time."

It would have been improper for Pein to stand suddenly or voice his displeasure, but the subtle cocky edge to Itachi's words were nearly enough to drive him to action.

Something had brought out the worst in the Uchiha. Itachi was normally so complacent and easy going. He never made trouble or cased waves like most of the other members. But, his exposure to Sakura, or maybe to any compatible female ready to mate brought out the cunning in him that no doubt was stemmed from the animal in him.

Like the other Uchiha, Itachi was the type of monster he was thanks to the DNA spiced from a big cat. Shisui was a cheetah, Itachi was a Black Panther, Izuna was a leopard, and Madara was a Bangled Tiger. Not normally so confrontational, Itachi was always more subtle in getting what he wanted.

At least he wasn't his uncle. If the roles had been reversed and Pein had to deal with a Madara who wanted something Pein didn't know if he'd be able to survive again. Last time Madara went wild for power they had to work with Oto and Danzo's alliance to survive the rage.

"Wait." Pein didn't stand, but he shifted forward, smoke the color of moss still drifting upwards from between his fingers. "You're taking Shisui to Tanzanite. That's Danzo's mission. Nageto approved of her involvement?"

"He's seen the same footage as you and I." Itachi was at the door, on hand already resting up against the rough metal. "He will not coddle so fierce a monster like the softer animals among us."

* * *

Sakura woke up and took her bike for a ride, ripping through the elevated roads that wound around black skyscrapers and under tunnels that were only ever barely lit. She road without direction, knowing well enough how to find her way back no matter where she ended up in the city.

NewDestruction was huge for the domed cities. It would take maybe a full day for Sakura to ride from one end to the other going as fast as she could, but New Destruction was as long as it was wide so there was a lot she would be missing. On the outskirts there were abandoned lots perfect for the sort of illegal dealings Temari and her harpies were hip to. In addition to the abandoned lots and distressed structures, there were a handful of abandoned tunnels to other domed cities. Some tunnels stretched for hours, others for days, only a select few were close enough to actually visit.

Sakura stopped in front of one, letting her bike idle beneath her as she flipped up her visor to better observe the demolished exterior of a gate leading to a closed down tunnel. She remembered hearing about these from Tenten. These were the tunnels to dead domes and fallen cities where revolution and anarchy failed.

There was a faded yellow kiosk next to the tunnel. Almost all the tunnels had kiosks next to them to welcome visitors. While this one was old and hardly ever used, it lit up after Sakura scanned the barcode on her wrist. An animated woman materialized on the screen, dressing in green.

"Welcome to Peridot. Would you like to vote for today's weather?" She waved her hand and two bars showed up with options for the artificial weather inside the dome. 'Sunny' or 'cloudy' two other options were presented, but in dull gray and when Sakura tried to tap 'thunder storm' or 'windy' nothing happened.

Biting her lip, Sakura tried to remember the steps as Tenten explained them. She voted for 'cloudy' and the woman cheered before disappearing. '18,498 people voted for sunny today' the screen read before fading to a default desktop. There was an icon with a letter on it that Sakura tapped. Her mail opened and she saw the text from Itachi she opened yesterday. There was a lot of information minimized into flags at the bottom of the page, and the orange one was the one with the mission debrief in it.

She had expected to hear about something from Deidara needing her help, but it looked like they wanted her to help out with Itachi and his partner before anything else. The Akatsuki had an alliance with a man in a different dome and wanted to see if the small army he was raising was as small as he claimed it was, or if he was strong enough to present a threat. Because of their falling out with Oto, they were reevaluating all their alliances.

Reviewing what she needed, Sakura clicked out of the email, checked again to see if she had nothing new in and then canceled her secession by swiping her arm again. The little woman on the screen flickered back into view, asking if she wanted to discontinue her secession. Sakura clicked YES and replaced her helmet, mounting her bike again.

She had two more days to herself and running around was doing her a world of good. She didn't like being with the other girls so much. She needed to get away and be by herself like the introvert she was starting to believe she was. Temari said that was also a result of being saddled with a vulture as a DNA animal. Vultures didn't like groups either, but kept to their own kind well enough. For Sakura, that was just her and her bike and the open, empty road.

The ride back was quick, but not as fast as Sakura would have liked. When she left it had been early and no one else had been on the road. Now there were a few cars and trucks, but nothing big enough to slow her down. Even when all the lanes were blocked Sakura dipped and dived between the obstacles on her smaller bike. Maybe she pissed some people off, maybe they were just always hanging their heads out cursing out pretty girls on bikes. Either way, Sakura flipped them the finger and went even faster.

She parked on the upper level, the one the misshapen road ran through. It was connected to the garage Tenten set up for the Harpies, and Sakura now knew her spot by heart. When she got to the stalls and found Kin crouched over in hers Sakura was a bit surprised.

"Kin?" she called hesitantly.

"Get away," the dark haired woman hissed.

Sakura bristled. She felt antagonized with just a phrase. "You're in my lane. You'll need to leave so I can park my bike."

"Do I look like I care about your bike? Just leave it outside."

Sakura set down the kickstand and dismounted, pulling off her helmet. "What is your problem? You're acting like a child."

Kin snarled and Sakura felt her skin crawl. Kin's snarl made her want to react, and not in the way that was wisest. It didn't make sense, but Sakura snarled back, feeling urges pull at her. She wanted to claw the younger girl's eyes out.

"Get out of my house!" Kin lashed and Sakura was faster.

Sakura threw her helmet at the girl, sending Kin off balance. Sakura went for Kin's side, jabbing with the hard edge of her hand. Kin rolled towards Sakura and snapped back up, hitting the underside of Sakura's jaw with her forehead. Sakura stumbled and took two in the chest before bringing her knee up and catching the next hit. She should have been softer, she knew she was a better fighter than Kin, but she raised her knee and then brought her elbow down across the girls' back. Kin retched onto the concert and rolled away, still heaving.

"Stay down," Sakura snarled, feeling more monster than human. Her skin turned gray in the areas it should have bruised green. She wanted to finish Kin off, she wanted to tear the girl apart, and it was all too much like how she felt around Temari whenever the older girl told Sakura to do something. Sakura was feeling territorial.

Kin quivered, looking up and glaring. There was snot stuck to her face and blood pooling in the corners of her lips. Her eyes were glassy too. It looked like she wanted to stand up again and defy Sakura, but a second later she dropped her head and sobbed.

She had submitted.

The fight left Sakura and she fell in the wake of it's absence, smarting from the bruises. Kin wouldn't have gone down easily up against anyone else, even though she didn't work out or train like Sakura and Tenten did. Sakura would be smarting for a while.

"Sorry," the younger girl whimpered, wiping her face with the back of her hand. She was a mess and Sakura saw that there were bruises lining her back that Sakura hadn't put there.

"Who hit you?" Sakura asked, sounding soft for the first time.

"…It's just another thing. Hana was…excited and her estrogen was up or something because she skipped the pills and we fought and I ran and…I hate this. I just want to stop. I love Hana. These stupid chemicals in our bodies make us monsters."

"Does this happen often?"

Kin shook her head. "It hasn't happened in a long, long time. Not since…Konan and Nageto first met. After Konan met him we were like this all the time. Then she mated and left and we were good, but sometimes seasons do this to us. We're sterilized, but they made us like this in the hopes of breeding."

Sakura curled her fingers into the fabric of her shorts. "I know what you mean. I hate it to. All of it. Is there another way to…"

Kin chuckled, but it was a dry chuckle. "Mate with a guy, or become interested in girls like Tenten…I don't know how else. Hinata was working on a way to reverse what they did, and she's better at it all. You know she doesn't get like us cause she's super submissive." Kin shook her head and then reached to remove the jacket she wore over her tube top. Her back exposed, she breathed a heavy sigh.

Between her shoulder blades was a flower with the skeleton of a bird perched between its petals. Wings grew in abstract angles among the thorns and leaves around her flower. Before she knew she was doing it, Sakura reached out to touch the tattoo.

Kin tensed and Sakura flinched. "Sorry, I didn't mean to do that. I forgot myself for a second there."

"It's fine." Kin bent her neck to let Sakura have a better view. "I knew a guy who did amazing work. I have two more-on on my ankle the other over my left rib cage…both of birds."

Sakura looked and saw the scars atop both of her shoulder blades where her wings would have grown. Something like pin throbbed in Sakura's own heart. "They're lovely," she breathed, closing her eyes and pretending she hadn't seen the wing scars so clearly. "Maybe I should get a set.

* * *

It was quiet in the shop with just a few bodies moving in and out. Kisame owned the tattoo parlor but worked in it less than the other artists. He had a lot more to do with the Akatsuki and his own hobbies these days, but he was trying to spend more time on his art before things got so too busy.

Itachi told him they had work at the end of the week and that was coming up quick. He doubted work that required two contracted laborers was easy work or even short work. He would likely be out another week recovering or doing whatever he needed to do to keep this Danzo guy in check. Later that night he planned on going over the mission details.

He was cleaning his tools, finished with his eleven O'clock and not due for another set until 3. The last job had taken longer since it was such an extensive job. Details killed him, but he loved it.

For his next client it was a first timer coming in with their own design or picking something out of the books. Something easy to relax into after a tiring morning. He had nothing else set up after the guy at three and that was great if he actually planned on doing his homework. Itachi would have his ass if he showed up again without an idea of what he needed to be doing. It was habit. Itachi was the brains and he was the good looking brawn.

There were papers on his desk of flowers and letter and fonts he had tattooed in the past. He stacked them and set them off to the side, keeping only one to finish a doodle. It was a variation on the sea serpent he sported on his left forearm.

"Oy, your three O'clock is here, yeah," the blond receptionist who modeled himself after Deidara said. Deidara hadn't visited in a while, and based off how badly Kisame had teased them about the pretty pink thing Sasori had a thing for, he doubted they would be around anytime soon.

Sighing, Kisame dropped his graphite pencil onto the pad of paper, letting it bounce and roll away. "Ok, send 'em in." He wasn't curt, but everything seemed to come out as a grunt.

Behind him there was a knock at the door. He turned, not knowing what he expected. "Er…excuse me. Hoshigaki Kisame?"

He would have to be blind not to recognize her, even with the funky new haircut. She took in his expression and smiled, her eyes narrowing in the expression and extending the length of her cat's eye makeup. A layer of glitter on her upper lids winked in response.

He stood to greet her and remembered how big he usually was in comparison to others. He dwarfed lesser males like Sasori and Deidara, but next to the pink haired chick he towered. She hadn't seemed so small or cute when she was fighting Hidan, and that guy was almost as big as Kisame.

"You're tiny," he blurted out before he could think of something better to fill the silence between them.

She made her eyes smile again and her lips followed. "You're bigger than I thought." She rolled her shoulders. "I'm Sakura, in case you…didn't know."

"Ah, uh," he laid his hand flat on his chest, feeling weird to be talking to her after talking about her to others for a while. "I'm Kisame…just Kisame. Don't bother being formal."

Sakura nodded. "You did Kin's tattoos. They were beautiful. She helped me with a sketch if you would be willing to apply it."

"That's….why I'm here." He kicked himself, mentally. He was normally more relaxed around his clients. It was only because she was the thing-person Sasori ordered from oto that he was off kilter. He felt a little guilty for teasing Sasori now and making a comment about pursuing her if ever he got the chance.

Meeting her in person was an experience. She was tiny and cute but also intimidating and sly and a little bit sexy. Looking down at her, he saw too much of her eyelashes to think she was innocent. But at the same time, going back to how tiny she was, he thought about lifting her and fitting her on his right bicep and carrying her around like a lookout on missions. He kind of wanted to know how that would feel.

She pulled out a fold of paper and pulled it open, stretching out the wrinkles. Kisame grunted, taking the offered page and laying it flat on his workbench. He turned his mind back to work. "And where do you want this?"

"Either on my back just under my wing stubs or right here," she said, pointing to the center area just under her breasts. Kisame had given plenty of tattoos to many women without shirts or worse. He didn't know or couldn't understand why the thought of lifting her shirt up that far was making him anxious.

He shook his head and frowned, angry at such wandering thoughts. "This is your bird, isn't it?"

"A lamb vulture, that's what my DNA comes from. Don't know why they chose that particular bird, it's not a hunter or stalker. It shouldn't have made a good fighter."

Kisame nodded again, looking at her drawing again. "They're strong though, and fierce over their things. Did you know…vultures are monogamous like most other birds, but they're violently jealous for their mates. They'll fight off other males if one gets too close to the female. Even though they don't have to hunt, they're powerful for other reasons."

Sakura couldn't help but grin. "Hey, you know some stuff. How did you come across such information?"

Kisame shrugged, not looking at her. He kept his eyes on the drawing. "You pick up things in a tattoo parlor, and I've been around for a while. I've seen plenty of enhanced come in wanting tattoos of their animals." He pulled down the front of his shirt. "There she is, the great white. That's where my enhanced DNA comes from."

Sakura reached forward, tugging his shirt down further. The knuckles bend around the edge of his shirt brushed up against his chest. He held his breath as she traced his ink with her eyes. It was oddly intimate and he wanted her to approve. He also wanted to fold her up against his chest and trap her there, but he didn't play with those thoughts; they would lead her nowhere good.

"She's lovely. You do her yourself?"

Kisame pulled his shirt back up, trying to pretend he didn't mind how it was a little stretched now and she could see the ink under his collarbones. His body played canvas to a host of other designs she might have liked to peak at. "No…there…I did a commission for another tattoo artists and he did her for me. It's it was a trade."

"Well, I like how Kin's came out. It was enough to make me stop and appreciate. So, what do you think about placement?"

Kisame looked at her back and remembered how her wings weren't burned or ripped out like they had been with the last Harpy. She had stubs that would bloom and grow soon. "Until you actually have your own wings, it's not a good idea to do anything to your back in case of infection. And while you might want this on your front, I think it would look nice on a bicep or thigh. It's thin enough."

The drawing was of profile of her vulture with one wing raise and the other stretched down. Behind the bird's head was a halo of flowers. He expected Sakura blossoms for her name, and it would have been appropriate, but there was a huge Imperial Chrysanthemum. The more he studied it, the more he wanted to see it on her thigh or arm.

Sakura looked at the drawing as well, humming along. "I think you're right, but I hadn't thought of that. Which would be better?"

"If you want, I could ink it onto both spots in pen ink and cover it with spray to keep it sealed for a few days. It's like a test drive. You see which one you like more, see what goes better with what you wear, and then make up your mind in a few days when you come back. It's not that much extra."

"Yeah, I think that's a better idea. Where should I sit for this?"

Kisame led her to the chair for his station and Sakura climbed up easily enough. Kisame had to air pump the chair and crank it back though because she was smaller than his last client. Sakura removed her vest jacket and positioned herself so her bare arm was supported and free. Kisame caught sight of the stubs on her back. They were subtle enough in a thin layer of skin stretched white. Through her thin skin he could see the color of her wings. White and red, just like her vulture.

He cleaned her arm, handling it with care before bring back the drawing and the ink pen. He had an excellent eye and was able to copy it without issue or complaint. She didn't try to talk to him while he worked, maybe because she thought she would distract him, but she hummed along with something playing in the background, and he could feel her body vibrate to the tun where his hand held her arms steady.

Kisame didn't know why he felt tired by the end of her first test tattoo. She looked it over in a mirror, thanked him, and then climbed back into the chair. Kisame had to pump it up even higher and then prop up the footrest for her to lay her leg across. He flipped down the arm rests and pulled his own stool closer.

Sakura was wearing shorts that were loose enough and short enough that he could push them up to her hips, exposing her thigh. Kisame held his breath, holding her leg down and cleaning the area. He could felt the supple skin of her thigh under his fingertips quiver at the cold of his sterilizing cloth and he couldn't say he didn't like it. He wanted to make her tremble for a different reason. He wanted to feel more of it, he wanted to trace his hand down her thigh and see where it led. He wanted to hear her voice when his fingers found purchase somewhere.

His pen touched down and he began to draw, paying extra care to completing the piece as nearly and artfully as possible while remaining faithful to the design. It was a good design and he wanted her to like it where he drew it. If she came back and asked for a tattoo of it on her thigh it would be a much longer stay with his fingers in her flesh, memorizing the feel of her thigh.

The ink was still wet, but it would take only seconds to dry. He pretended it was wetter than it was and blew, sensuously over her skin, raising gooseflesh and earning a staggered breath from her. Glancing up he caught her biting her lip. He had to swallow hard in order to speak properly and not sound like the hoarse pubescent boy he feared he was acting like.

"There, you're done. Just need to spray and you're done." He reached for the can, turning his whole body away so she wouldn't see how his blue skin turned purple in parts with all the blood rushing around.

"Thank you," she said as he pointed the aerosol can and sprayed. "It's beautiful."

"It'll last a week if it doesn't get scrubbed or washed. Otherwise come back in four to five days and I'll finish the job.

Sakura nodded, holding out her wrist with the barcode. "I heard I pay you with this."

Kisame chuckled, reaching for his mobile and attaching the scanner. "That is how everyone is doing it these days. No one carries plastic in this dome anymore. I came from the Lapis dome and they used cards for everything. Most of the citizens hated using their barcodes for so much, but that was because they were a paranoid group of people."

Scanning her own barcode she noticed that there was an elaborate frame of octopus tentacles encircling the rectangle patch of skin where his barcode was. It was something she noticed on a few other citizens. Apparently, it was the trend in tattoo fashion to frame your barcode.

"Do you have a binder just for barcode frames?" Sakura asked, nodding at his own framed arm.

Wordlessly he nodded, standing up and picking through a row of physical binders stored underneath a display monitor that was flipping through photos of past tattoos from clients who came before. The binder Kisame picked out was dirty with dust. Nearly no one ever used the binders anymore.

Sakura took the book from Kisame with a word of thanks before setting it down and starting to flip through. Kisame lingered close, but kept quiet while she looked, content to clean the counter with a rag.

Sakura felt her eyes swell with all the lines and shapes and wonderful combinations. There was a ton of variety to look through. A few pages had prices but fewer had names of the artists willing to draw the works. Nearly everything that had a label to it for names had Kisame's on it.

"Some of these are quite elaborate." Her fingertip rested atop a drawing of a cage of bones criss crossing underneath the barcode before thorns came out to wrap around the rectangle. "Did you design most of these?"

Kisame pointed to a signature that looked like a sloppy S and nothing more. "Most of them came from Sasori. He and Deidara used to help out before getting to good for tattoos. Their art was too good for cheap capitalistic ventures. Great artists, but with their attitudes they were bad for business in the long run."

Sakura nodded dully, feeling awkward about the bones and thorn artwork knowing it came from Sasori's mind. It was lovely, but haunted. Closing the binder she handed it back to Kisame with a forced smile. "Thanks. When I come back in I might ask for something to frame my code."

"It's all on our site. Just look up our name on any kiosk and there'll be a directory of prints to view…or…"

He held up a finger and stepped out of the room, going back to a desk left in the dark corner. Sakura didn't watch him make a mess of the drawers, but heard it well enough to get an idea of what he was doing. He returned a moment later.

"Here," he said handing her a chip with a code on the back and a blue shark on the front. "It's to contact me. Make an appointment with me directly whenever you want."

Sakura smiled, turning the coin over in her hand. It was the third in her collection, and she found their edges magnetizing together when kept in her pocket. Temari and the other girls said they didn't have their own. Only the well to do or rich had them, and only the powerful or ultra rich had them customized.

"Is it okay to give this to me?" she asked as she slipped it into her breast pocket. It found the other two coins and clicked on.

"I heard from Deidara that you were going to be a part timer. It's just good business."

Something made her eyes sparkle. "Oh, sounds like you didn't know."

"Didn't know what?"

Sakura rolled her shoulders, hopping down from the bar stool she had earlier climbed up to view the binder from. "It's not a big deal. I'll see you soon, Hoshigaki Kisame."

He would see her in a few days when her ink had faded and she had made up her mind as to where she liked to have her tattoo put down in permanent ink. He knew that, and he assumed that was what she was talking about, but the way she smiled and narrowed her eyes was too mischievous and sly for him to feel comfortable about it.

Maybe it was just him though, getting worked up over a pretty client he felt bad for bad talking before actually meeting. It was shameful to consider he actually spoke to Sasori about her like she was a thing. She wasn't. She was as human and dangerous as any of them, and twice as enticing.

With nothing else to give his time to, Kisame pulled up the email from Itachi and began to actually read what he had just skimmed. There was nothing surprising or interesting enough to keep him from yawning halfway through. They were going after Danzo to check and see if the creep was rising another army, and if that army posed a threat to Akatsuki. Danzo was a creep he felt comfortable killing even without a reason. He was the type that raised orphans and broke them out of their humanity and molded them back up in a image not unlike his own.

It made sense that Shisui was on the mission detail. Danzo had tried to recruit Shisui into his 'elite guard' when Shisui had been a teenager and cut off from the rest of his family. The two had history that was a little darker than Kisame was privy to, but Kisame knew enough to know he didn't want to know more.

There was one more tab to go through, pertaining to the last consultant. He clicked on the tab and the page came up in a flash of white and green lights. Suddenly, her words made more sense.

"Oh shit," he muttered, covering the bottom half of his face with his hand, trying to hide the color rushing up under his skin. "Oh, sounds like you didn't know." "Didn't know what?"

Yeah, he was an idiot.

* * *

Another day passed, lost to the road and the thrill of danger behind the handlebars of her bike. It was growing increasingly difficult to stay in control around the other girls, so Sakura took to the streets whenever she could. Hinata sent over medicine for her as well as the others, but Sakura spat hers out right away and couldn't stop gagging for a full four minutes afterwards. She understood why Kin didn't take it.

The taste of the pill was rank and metallic. It was like tasting a piece of corroded metal, and something inside her reacted violently at even the thought of it. It wasn't until much later, when Sakura was on her own, that she started to understand why her body was so violent with the medicine.

It came in a memory. Something hazy and blocked out, drifting just beyond reach, held the answers she was seeking.

Sakura stood in the bathroom, naked atop the tiles as the water drained underneath her toes. She was clean, but her eyes were dull and distant, giving way to the broken memories. Her body was forgotten.

They bend over her, feeding her through a tube tucked down her throat. She was crying and gagging and they were cursing, trying to fix it so she got whatever they were trying to feed her. It was clear right away that their priority was not her comfort.

Hormones to make her more attractive to the opposite sex. It was a breeding tactic used with animals. It didn't make sense for a volunteer to undergo such enhancements. That was because she hadn't bee a volunteer like her file read. She had been taken, caged, bought and sold and stolen. Her memories were a mess because of them and there was no way she could fix it on her own. If she wanted to know where she came from originally, or what dome or city she used to live in, her memories would need to return. She doubted Kabuto would be willing to tell her.

"Not the time for that," she said out loud, shutting her eyes and leaning her head back. She could feel the beads of water roll with gravity down her spine. She ran her hands through her hair, noting how the side she had buzzed was starting to fill in already. Her hair grew faster than the average person's, but that was because of the regeneration she underwent after her fight with Hidan. Almost like she had aged the amount of time it would have taken for her to recover normally.

Sakura turned to look at herself in the glass of the screen door. She was clear enough as a reflection that she didn't need to bother with a mirror, even though she saw herself through steam and water droplets. There were scars on her body, she felt them when she ran her hands over, but she couldn't remember where they came from. There was one over her stomach and off to the left, looking like a knife wound that had once upon a time been buried deep in her gut. There were other scars too, some that looked like claw marks or wolf bites. She didn't remember ever encountering a wolf or fighting someone who could have given her such scars.

Her hands paused right above the navel where the freshest scar began. Hidan's scythe had left a mark. Three raised tears were still pink and glossy with new skin. They would fade with time, becoming less noticeable than the marks on her stomach. Considering Hidan had killed her with his attack, it made sense that there would be something left over, no matter how small or insignificant seeming. They were just new additions in her collection.

Ruffling her hair once more and turning the door, Sakura still couldn't help but wonder where her scars had come from, the ones that were old enough to be from before her abduction. They told stories, and she couldn't read any of them. The more she dwelled on it, the more frustrated she felt. Her memories were stolen from her and she wanted them back.

Sakura paused, her hand on the handle of the door, noticing a figure through the glass. Narrowing her eyes, she pulled the door back with force, letting out steam and heat in a rush to loud her body. Hana's bleeding form came into focus.

Cursing, Sakura grabbed a towel meant for her and rushed to the brunette, applying pressure to the wound. "What happened?"

Hana's eyes were glazed and it was clear her body was in distress, but she turned her face away and grinned. Even in pain, she was still the stubborn, obstinate bully type that never talked about what was bothering her, even though Sakura expected even Hana had her fair share of regrets.

"Did you get attacked? Is this something the others should be warned about?" Sakura tried again.

"Shut up. You're done with the shower." Hana tried to move, pulling away from Sakura and more blood welled up from where she bent. Sakura hissed, pushing the woman down and this time Hana didn't reject the offer of help.

"You need to stay still and wait for this to clot. I won't ask you annoying questions if that's going to make you do something stupid." Sakura had to shake her head again to keep the water dripping from her hairline from going into her eyes.

The two sat in silence, one breathing heavier than the other. After a while when it looked like the worst of the bleeding was over Sakura moved away to check the wound again. Doing her best, Sakura helped Hana remove the ruined clothes and wash without disturbing the wound site. Afterwards Sakura found bandages and applied them to the appropriate places without speaking.

Sakura tied off the end of the largest bandage and stood, preparing to leave. It was Hana's voice that stopped her. "You're not going to ask again?"

"If it was important you would have told me."

Hana chuckled dryly. "Fine. Watch out when you leave. Even with the drugs Temari is in a mood. I am too. If I wasn't so injured I'd want to fight you here and now, rip your pretty little wing buds out."

Sakura cursed. "It's gotten this bad? Temari could have killed you."

"It's your fault, you know that right. We were fine till you showed up."

Sakura swallowed, not moving. She had guessed as much. After hearing about Konan and how her departure had conceded with the loss of tension Sakura recognized a pattern. She was the variable. Somehow, her presence set off some sort of base animal coding that was left over from their experiments.

When Hanabi talked to Sakura about how it had been back then vs how it was now, Sakura felt guilt roll in her gut. She was the cause of a lot of the strife. It wasn't anything she did intentionally, but because they came from a fucked up lab with fucked up men in charge of altering their bodies they were enemies on a base level that couldn't be reasoned away.

"I'm going for a ride. After this mission I'll ask Konan about a place of my own. I've already talked it over with Temari and she said she'd run it up the line. I guess she never mentioned it to you." She didn't need to, but Sakura felt like adding a little more bit to her words. "Guess she was too busy putting you down to share that information."

Without waiting for a reply, Sakura turned on her bare heel and left the bathroom to get dressed and ready to leave. If she listened, Hana would heard the motorbike rev to life before Sakura tore out of the nest for what could possibly be the last time.

Tenten came in moments later, as Hana was finishing pulling on a tee shirt that dipped low in the front. The newcomer raised an eyebrow at the scene and whistled low. "I'm surprised your all in one piece. I thought for sure that Sakura would tear you apart when you walked in on her."

"I was in no such state to do such a thing."

"Still, based off how you've treated her in the past, I think it's still pretty amazing she didn't take advantage of you just a little bit, you know, to establish her dominance or whatever."

Hana looked up and glared. "Tenten…" she growled. "If you have a point other than to mock me make it and scram. I'm not in the mood to put up with your banter today." When Hana tried to stand it was with much wincing.

Tenten rolled her eyes and chuckled under her breath. "I'm just saying you're lucky. She could have ignored you, but she stayed behind to fix you up."

"Don't think that wasn't lost on me. I probably wouldn't have done the same if the roles were reversed."

"Totes." Tenten hummed a low note, looking off to the far wall with a hazy look to her eyes["Yeah… if it had been me with and a wet, naked Sakura had been stuck in a room all by ourselves, I would have done things differently too."].

"Yeah… if it had been me with and a wet, naked Sakura had been stuck in a room all by ourselves, I would have done things differently too."

Hana winced at the mental image. "That's not what I meant, Tenten."

"Uh huh." Tenten didn't seem to comprehend Hana anymore as she stared off across the room at the wall, her imagination running wild. Hana just shook her head and cursed, muttering something about not being able to understand some people.

* * *

Sakura eased her bike into the carport and cut the engine before walking it over to the designated parking area for bikes. There were a few empty slots, and a few more filled with an assorted collection of bikes belonging to different members.

The building was one of many that belonged to Itachi, but it was one of the structures dedicated to Akatsuki use. Above her on the ground floor and the first few lower floors there were drone workers running around, finishing the legitimate business Itachi's front conducted. 'Import and export' was the official story.

She accessed a lift and once inside punched her code into the keypad. All the buttons lit up red before going dark, registering her request. A moment later the lift began to whirr, taking her up to the restricted levels.

A few moments later the lift stuttered and eased to a stop, opening up to reveal a distracted looking Uchiha. Sakura smiled at the man and Itachi's eyes lifted from the papers in his hands to regard her with proper interest.

"Sakura." Itachi said, blinking once. "You're early."

She shrugged, looking sheepish. "Sorry. Will that be a problem?"

"It's a refreshing change of pace. I'm not used to such punctuality. Kisame has yet to arrive and my useless cousin is still getting ready in his room." Itachi stepped into the lift and pressed the keypad with the same combination before leaning back against the same wall as her. "In all likeliness he was watching the television until just now."

"Life endangering missions aren't that big of a deal to him?" Sakura tried to joke.

Itachi spared her a soft smile and his voice was back to being low and dark like velvet. "I doubt the mission will be so…stimulating. We do hope to avoid provoking conflict, and out trip is in actuality a preventative measure against violence."

Sakura closed her eyes and nodded, trying to pretend she hadn't noticed how deep and seductive she thought his voice had turned once he stood beside her. Itachi was back to looking over the papers in his hands, appearing for all intents and purposes to be a busy business man, but Sakura knew there was more to his appearance, not matter how attractive it was.

He looked delicate with thin fingers and pale skin so fine and smooth it could belong to a doll's. Itachi seemed more suited to flower arranging and Geisha dances she thought. His shirt had a zipped running down the left side and enough of it was pulled down that she could see his collarbones. She didn't know why that made her want to look away and blush, but the whole idea of his neck was enough to make her mildly salivate with hell knows what.

"Here we are." His voice broke her out of her thoughts. Opening her eyes she saw the doors had opened, though she hadn't felt the lift stop when it reached their floor.

"Is it okay?" Sakura asked, stepping out of the lift. "We were supposed to meet at Shisui's apartment for the debrief, but if we're early he might not be ready."

"He should have thought of that before freeloading in one of my suites," Itachi called back over his shoulder. He paused, turning to glance back at her when he noticed she wasn't immediately beside him. "Coming?"

Shrugging, Sakura took longer steps to catch up with the taller male and walk the rest of the way at Itachi's side. While he was certainly taller than her, most men were so it wasn't enough of a deal to make her feel dwarfed about it. Even in comparison to the other girls, Sakura was tiny.

Itachi stopped in front of a door at the end of the hallway. Sakura noticed that this particular hallway only had four door, leading her to believe the rooms behind those doors were quite large or non existent. With confidence, Itachi swiped a ring on his finger over the touchpad and a light that read OVERRIDE flashed on the screen before the door slid open. Beckoning with a gentle wave, Itachi stepped over the threshold into the room. Sakura followed close behind, heading the door slid shut behind her after the motion detectors turned down.

The entryway was large enough and open enough that Sakura could see enough of the apartment room to know it was bigger than any of the rooms back at the nest she shared with the girls. The furniture was minimalist in design and well polished by the look of it. He had a sunken floor for the living room where a mess of pillows and cushions filled the pit to substitute for a couch.

The living room fed into the dining/kitchen room, and was left open for an adjoining retreat area. The door to the master suite was left open, allowing Sakura to see inside from the hallway and hear the water running from a shower. The water turned off a moment later drawing Itachi's attention. He crossed to a desk outside of the bedroom and set his papers down. "You have less than fifteen minutes to get ready, after having had a whole day free of responsibilities, Shisui. You disappoint us."

Sakura heard grumbling and angry footsteps slap against wet tile. "I shouldn't be judged for what I do in my free time so long as I'm ready when you tell me to be ready-not before!" There was more angry stomping. "And I don't appreciate you coming in on your own like you own the place."

Itachi's answer was monotone as the stomping drew closer. "I do own the building."

A wave of steam eased out from the room adjacent to the master bedroom as the figure in question emerged, angry and ranting. "I pay rent! That's not enough of a reason to violate my privacy. I've told you before that-" Shisui stopped suddenly, noticing for the first time that Itachi was not alone and that he hadn't bothered with a towel.

Sakura turned her face away from the window at the sound and saw Shisui in nothing but his birthday suit, standing frozen on the threshold with comically bulging eyes and a growing red blush across both his cheeks-the ones she could see. She tried to keep her gaze neutral, to not look like she was looking, but Sakura knew her pupils had dilated at the sight of a richly toned and wet Shisui standing without obstruction. Her throat went dry and she might have stared forever if Itachi didn't step in to cut off her line of sight, hissing at his cousin to 'show some decency' and not be such a 'parading ass.'

Shisui tried to retort back, but his efforts came out like strangled squeaks from a small animal and less like the snappy comebacks he usually had for Itachi. Eventually Shisui managed to recover enough to sneak back into his bathroom and close the door this time. Sighing heavily, Itachi turned back to Sakura who had recovered enough that she no longer looked like she wanted a piece of Shisui's ass. She might be hormonal, but she wasn't crazy about it. She could control her urges better than others.

"I'm sorry you had to see that. Shisui should have known better."

"How could he. I didn't let him know I was even here, and this is his house. I'd be a sad thing if he wasn't even allowed such a freedom in his own residence."

"Though he claims to pay rent, he's still a freeloader who tries to bargain my good graces for his unlisted services."

He swallowed looking her over once more and Sakura felt the need to pretend nonchalance increase. She didn't want Itachi to suspect she might have been interested in his cousin. She wasn't as thirsty as she knew others suspected her of being, based on how she dressed or who she hung out with. Yes, she had a healthy sex drive that was possibly more healthy than it needed to be, but that didn't mean she let it rule her. She was her own person with her own will and reasoning capabilities.

"Besides," she absently added. "We were early."

Itachi glanced at a digital reading atop the stove in the kitchen. "By ten minutes, that's hardly unforgivable." He turned into the kitchen, his gaze intent on something. Opening a panel in the wall he pulled out a pair of ceramic cups that were mustard colored with a green band running along the base. "Would you care for some tea?"

Sakura nodded, wordlessly wondering what tea would taste like. She hadn't tried it before, or if she had she had no memory of it. Sakura wonder if she would taste something familiar, because she had heard that things like scents or tastes were strong memory triggers, and regaining her memory was something she was increasingly interested in.

Itachi set the two cups aside and set up a stainless steel kettle to boil over a ring of heat that turned on with a button. Sakura watched wordless as the minutes passed by and Itachi sorted through the steps necessary. He brewed a silk bag of tea and poured two cups worth for both Sakura and himself before instructing her to let it cool before tasting. By the time Sakura had touched her lips to the rim, Shisui was dressed and emerging from the shower room with a bouncy head of hair and a clean face that was still partly pink.

Sakura looked up from her drink and nodded in his direction, pretending she hadn't seen his junk just moments before. "Shisui," she greeted in a calm tone, smiling.

"S-Sakura." He chuckled, rubbing the back of his neck as he approached the pair. "I hadn't expected to see you here with Itachi so early. Normally we're all on time or a little behind but…"

There was a heavy pounding on the door and Sakura looked at the clock. It was time for their debrief to start. "That must be Kisame."

"I'll introduce the two of you," Itachi smoothly explained, sipping at his tea with calm eyes cast downwards. It was black tea, and to Sakura it went down like hot water, nearly tasteless.

"There's no need for that, we're already acquainted," Sakura explained with an easy smile. She was wearing a full body black suit with a loose red, leather jacket for color, so she couldn't show off her ink easily, but she pointed to her shoulder. "He did the art for my temporary tattoos. By the time we get back I should have an idea of where I want my design."

"A tattoo?" Itachi echoed, still surprised by her admission to knowing Kisame at all. "Where?"

"One on my forearm and the other on my thigh."

Sakura didn't notice the darkness creep into Itachi's eyes. The Uchiha stared down into his tea listening as his partner entered in behind Shisui. Only when he was called into the living room with everyone else did he lift his head. Sakura was walking between the two males talking about something with Kisame and the conversation sounded easy and light. Ah, he would have to be more forceful in deterring potential threats to his conquest.

As the group situated themselves, Shisui grabbed a remote and turned on the projector imbedded in the far wall to show off a pre made powerpoint slide show of all the information he had gathered. Since their last assent of Danzo and his small army, the dark haired elder had made several large purchases of manufacturing companies that shouldn't have raised as many eyebrows as it did. One of the companies manufactured heavy duty battle gear for foreign military or private companies, but didn't seem to be selling as much as they were making.

There were a few other points of interest Shisui pointed out, but it was all information that had been in their files the first time. The only new information was the tidbits Shisui added himself. Their mission was to scout and observe. Itachi and Kisame were members who would address Danzo publicly, claiming to be making a causal trip to the foreign dome, while Sakura and Shisui snooped around for evidence that could prove useful. This meant splitting up.

The wall behind them beeped and Shisui touched a panne before print started scrolling down the wall. The taller Uchiha blinked, closing the text and turning to Itachi and his teammates. "Our ride is ready. I arranged for automated transport. Less suspicious if we're on a bus making stops in all different places. Don't look at me like that Itachi. It's private."

"Is this for the sake of the mission. Will it help us with Danzo?" Kisame asked, also sounding disappointed. It was dangerous to rely on others for your transportation in a pinch.

"If things go south there are bikes I have stashed nearby at checkmarks. But yes, Danzo is smart. He knows this sort of entrance is less hostile and won't take it as a threat so quickly. We're better off this way so that Sakura and I can sneak in undetected and do our thing." Shisui turned to Sakura. "Right?"

The pink haired girl nodded, reaching behind her and feeling the hood she could slip over her face easily enough. It was long and wide enough that it actually hid her face in shadow and stayed down when she needed it to; It wasn't just for show. It would be great for hiding her hair and helping her blend in with the shadows. Shisui had already showed her the schematics of the place and she knew where she was going. She was taking the high road and maneuvering along the old drainage pipes at the ceilings of most of the room-in the high places where no one looked.

"Our estimated time of arrival is in five hours. We're departing," Itachi interjected, standing and putting his frame between his cousin and Sakura's line of site. "Let's go."

Sakura followed obediently behind Kisame as the large blue man took a spot next to his partner in Akatsuki. Taking the elevator all the way to the garage level, it was only another four minutes before they were all inside the bus transport closed off to the rest of the dome citizens. Their driver was another android, making their ride automatic.

Inside the transport were benches set in artificially process high grade leather comfortable enough to sleep on. It was a large transport with a comfortably sized interior that allowed the group enough room to get up and walk around in. There were benches under the windows, seats set up in rows, and even a grouping of chairs surrounding a table in the center of the car. Kisame and Itachi took seats towards the front in one of the rows, naturally at ease with each other's presence. The two seemed used to working with each other while Shisui reclined a seat back enough to lay down in and yawned once more pulling his own hood down over his eyes and dozing.

Not knowing where else to go, Sakura took a seat under a window and leaned her head against the glass. Their transport was more like a bus, but riding in it reminded Sakura of what it felt like when she read the monorail with Hanabi before her bike was finished with repairs. Hanabi said there used to be more trains in their dome, but now the only ones that ran were the ones above ground. Anything below ground was shut of and forbidden after the uprising. Too many people had tried to infiltrate their dome that way.

Sakura closed her eyes, content with the feeling of motion and less with the sights it brought. They were heading into a tunnel that would connect them with another dome city they had to pass through n order to get to the dome where Danzo hid the bulk of his operations. It felt nice to relax into the rhythm and sounds and minuscule motions of their ride. Maybe she should try what Shisui was doing and take a cat wouldn't be able to fall asleep so easily, but maybe resting her eyes wouldn't be too much of a problem. No one needed her just yet.

Not knowing what else to do, Sakura turned in her seat to look out the window and pretend she was alone inside the car for a little while. They were in one of the tunnels connecting the city of NewDestruction to a neighboring Dome that still had it's original name, Jasper. Once they reached the end of the tunnel they would be in the west section of the city, meaning they were extra close to the next tunnel that would take them from Jasper to Tanzanite, the city where Danzo called home. It was another original city the same as Japser. Unlike NewDestruction, there had yet to be an overthrow of power that resulted in the christening of a new city name. The machinery and billboards might still call her city Peridot, but because of her battle scars no one called her that anymore. Sakura came from NewDestruction.

A second letter the tunnel fell away and hues of red and tan dominated her vision as saffron colored towers rose up from the heart of the much smaller city, healthy and vibrant with a depressed sort of Art Deco style hidden in between the edges and shapes and offset by the sinking, holographic sun. There were less highways, she noticed, but it looked like a healthy city. It made her feel warm behind her breastbone the way longing for something made her feel cold.

She closed her eyes for what felt like just a moment, but when she opened them again Shisui was right in front of her face, resting his head on his arm which was folded atop the head of his bench seat. He smiled impishly at her, the corners of his eyes turning up slightly with the expression. He looked cute for a full grown man she had been thinking about jumping only hours earlier.

"What? You were sleeping," Sakura said with a pout, wondering if he was judging her for drifting off.

"You looked like a cute little animal when you sleep. I wanted to pet your head or scratch you behind your ears or something," Shisui laughed.

Sakura really did pout, pushing her lip out. "Moi, don't tease me so much. I left you alone when you were asleep."

"But I'm not nearly as interesting to talk to as you are, my bird."

Something in his eyes sparkled and she wrinkled her nose at the nickname, pretending to hate it."What? You look like you want to ask something."

"Did you like it?" Sakura blinked, confused and lacking context. "What you saw, back at my apartment, when you walked in on me in my fragile state with the intention of taking advantage of poor old me." Sakura tisked, her cheeks turning pink as she looked away. Only when Shisui grabbed her hand did she glance back at him. His eyes were serious, dark and heady. "Did you like it?" he asked in a tone nearly as low as Itachi's and just as sinful.

Sakura tried to swallow, her throat felt dry. "I-I-" She licked her lips, trying to pull back away from him, feeling like the distance between them was too little. "I-I-no."

"Oh sakura," he chuckled darkly. She nearly tasted the sound of his tenor in the back of her throat when she breathed. He tugged on her hand again and laid her pal flag against his chest, positioning it right above his heart. "Feel what you've done to me. My heart's a mess because of you. Feel what you've done to me."

Still holding onto her wrist, his fingers flexed against her hand sensually tracing the side of her palm. She shivered, feeling ever vibration of his heart echo through her bones. He teased the underside of her wrist, his fingers slipping under the edge of her sleeve. She watched him lick his lips before tugging on her wrist, dragging her hand down, further, further, over his sternum and navel to a space between his legs. Sakura squeaked, trying to pull away, frightened by what she would feel when his hand led her there. She was a mess with too much blood turning her face red. Her throat was cotton, she could hardly swallow. He didn't let her hand go.

Shisui's voice was sin as he leaned in to whisper. "Feel what you've done to me."

She remembered her strength and yanked her hand back, scooting further back on the bench, away from the cheeky Uchiha. He watched her with bright eyes before laughing loudly at her antics. "Y-you…" Sakura choked on her own words, still so red in the face. If she had swallowed a cave of butterflies she doubted she would feel any different.

"Relax my bird, I would never initiate something like that right before a mission. I'm not planning on jumping you between the here and there." His laughter subsided and his eyes found her, unwilling to drop the gaze. "I just wanted you to know what you were dealing with, with me. If you wanted it, come see me after the mission. It's an open invitation with no expiration date."

"The-the mission should come first," Sakura managed to make out.

She looked up past Shisui and saw Kisame snoring in his seat with Itachi nowhere nearby. A second later the door to the front opened and Itachi stepped back in, closing his mobile and stashing it somewhere inside his jacket/shirt. He had just finished with a private call, it looked like.

Shisui hummed in disappointment, knowing that Itachi's return meant the end of his antics. He turned back to wink at Sakura. "That's fine, just know my offer still stands. I'd love to see you around more often though. You know where I live, eh?"

Sakura turned her face back to the window, prepared to ignore him the rest of the way if she had to. He was terribly distracting and far too pretty to be around for too long if there was something she was supposed to be doing. She had a mission she needed to worry about and prepare for. Her part was simple and straightforward, but she couldn't let her sense of focus drift.

They were at the edge of Jasper, ready to enter the next tunnel when Itachi stood from his seat and turned to address both Sakura and Shisui, even though both contracted soldiers sat at opposite ends. "Before we exit this tunnel the pair of you will have to disembark. Shisui, do you have transportation arranged within the transport or were you planning on making Sakura walk?"

"It was an idea." Snickering, the elder Uchiha stood and moved to the back of the room where a tall cabinet made the walkway narrow. He opened the doors and hanging up by it's front tire dangled a sleek red motorbike with an exaggerated windshield and room for two in the back. Shisui pulled out the rack and the Bike eased down onto it's back tire before he unhooked it and the whole thing came free.

"I only see one," Itachi drawled, clearly not amused.

"We only needed one. On the way out I've arranged for Sakura to have her own, but for getting there I didn't see the need." Shisui inclined his head in Itachi's direction. "I am the one who knows the secret entrances, remember?"

"Don't get cocky, kid!" Kisame barked from his seat towards the front. Itachi didn't say anything, but his expression was one that mirrored the sentiment.

Itachi turned towards Sakura. "Are you ready for departure? We won't be stopping so it might be a rough transition."

"I think I'll be able to handle myself," Sakura answered, looking over the bike from where she now stood. It was a lovely contraception that looked like it was built for speed, posing minimal wind resistance.

Next to the bike rack sat a pair of helmets, both a dull charcoal color with black glass visors. Shisui took one for himself and tossed the other to Sakura who tucked her hair into it before slipping it down over her face. It was a nice, snug fit that was sure to protect her should she need that sort of protection.

"You have twelve minutes before we reach the end of the tunnel. I suggest you disembark before then."

"Yeah, yeah, we get it, we're on it," Shisui grumbled, flipping down his visor and turning the bike around. He nodded to Sakura and she slipped in behind him, surprised by how much room there was for her. She thought it would be a tight fit, but the bike seemed to compliment a passenger. "Hold on to me," Shisui instructed, turning the engine over and sparking it to life.

Sakura did as she was told and leaned forward, against his back, wrapping her arms around his torso while he began to back the bike up to the edge of the car. Itachi watched, poised and ready to open the back once Shisui gave him the signal. Once Itachi saw his cousin flip a thumbs up, the back opened up and Sakura felt the wind pull at her. Shisui released the brakes and the bike rolled backwards, slipping off the edge and onto the old asphalt before spinning to life and taking off after the transport.

Sakura felt herself being torn at by the wind and air around them as she and Shisui became a blur of red and black following the path set out in front of them. She ducked her head and pulled in close to keep herself secured, but couldn't help but smile underneath the black glass of her helmet. She loved this feeling where the world was nothing more than a rush in her bloodstream, pumping her heart faster with pure elation.

If she let go of Shisui and lifted her arms up would he stop her? Did she care?

Glancing behind them Sakura saw the transport being left behind as it traveled in the same direction, but at a reduced speed. The plan was for Sakura and Shisui to speed ahead to a back entrance and sneak in through forgotten tunnels while Kisame and Itachi knocked on the front door, claiming to just casually stop by.

Shisui had apparently done this before. It wasn't accurate to call him a handler, but he was the person Akatsuki charged with keeping an eye on Danzo and his movements. In the past, their intel said something about Danzo abducting children out of the slums and engineering them for his own private forces, and Sakura wondered how Shisui knew that. How close did he have to get with this Danzo character?

She felt the punch ripple through her as Shisui released the handle for the acceleration and lost the neck breaking thrust that made feel Sakura so free. The tunnel was nearly finished and she could see light, bright and blinding growing up ahead of them.

She couldn't hear well, but she could have sworn she heard Shisui tell her to hang on. He leaned in hard to the right, so far that Sakura thought their knees would touch asphalt, but his tires were wide and caught the road at the angle without losing them to the street. Sakura held her breath and din't let it go till they had righted again. They were inside the city, bright and blinding, they were inside Tanzanite, the city that had yet to fall.

Sakura was a bit taken aback. She had expected Tanzanite to be a bit more like Jasper, or maybe a bit like her own dome city, but Tanzanite looked like it was worse off than both of the cities. The blinding white she had been so afraid of earlier wasn't white, it was silver, and it was scorching. The buildings were metal on shades of gray like most other buildings, but they all reached for the sky with decrepit spires and gothic arches bent like half hearted embraces. The sky was silver and gray and Sakura wondered if there had ever been color in this city.

"I thought Tanzanites were pretty stones," she said t herself, not really caring if Shisui heard her or not.

"The cities weren't named after stones for that reason." He reached back and tapped her knee before they turned hard again and shot forward, fast onto a highway. There were tunnels everywhere, few of them exposed to the world, and they were caught in one that split and separated like the arteries in a heart chamber.

Sakura didn't say anything more, not knowing if he was going to explain further or if it was a dropped subject with nothing more worth mentioning further. Maybe once the mission was over she'd ask him again, or maybe she wouldn't. She suspected seeking Shisui out after the mission's' end would be dangerous.

As if her thoughts were known to him, Shisui reached back again to touch the tip of her knee, just light enough for her to feel it, but not long enough for it to feel intrusive. She didn't react, one way or the other, her gaze was out in the opposite direction and that was where it was going to stay. She closed her eyes and tried to pretend she didn't understand what he was trying to say.

'After the mission, find me. After…don't forget me. After. Not now but later, after.'

They sped for quite a distance more, seeing more of the same, sad stone and metal buildings that reached with half hearted attempts for an artificial sky that never gave them anything but murk. The silver light seemed to drain all the color out of the city. Only the streaked neon lights from the cars and bikes around them on the road seemed to be strong enough to bring color into this depressed city. Danzo really picked a winner of a city to overthrow. Would the citizens ever protest? Would anyone even care?

They dipped down into another tunnel that opened to a road between towers that was sunk and dark, deep enough that the silver light couldn't reach it. She didn't need to be told to know they were in the slums of the depressed city. A little further still and they dipped down again and there was cement all up the side of another building, beneath it drains for sewage and other things.

"Please, no," Sakura moaned, already unable to stand the stench. She squeezed his stomach pleading for a kinder fate.

Shisui laughed, the sound vibrating his whole body. "No, I just wanted to scare you."

Sakura was so relieved she didn't even hit him, though she thought he deserved it for the heart attack she was recovering from. He pulled out and rounding the building a little more and Sakura saw loading docks with dented black sheet doors.

"It's longer, and we can't ride once we're inside, but you won't get so dirty. Better?"

Sakura nodded, dismounting once the bike came to a stop. Shisui hid their ride behind a dumpster that hadn't been touched in decades and followed her. Everything in this section of the city looked dead and abandoned. Their helmets retracted to a band of metal they could wear around their waists till they needed them again. All they would need to do is spring the latch and stand back.

Shisui took the lead and Sakura followed behind, pulling her hood up and tugging it down far enough to hide her face. There was a door not properly sealed that he pulled back enough for Sakura to shimmy in behind. He was right behind her, reaching for her hand to lead her to the wall. Sakura followed his lead and waited till her eyes adjusted to the dark enough to see outlines. Shisui needed green glasses to see where they were going, but Sakura had been enhanced enough that she could see decently well in the dark. She didn't have excellent vision, and she was more blind than able, but it was enough to justify refusing the glasses so long as she stayed close to Shisui. If they got into a fight she would have to rely on her other senesces, and thankfully smell was still one of them.

Shisui hadn't lied about it being a distance, it was the reason they had sped off ahead of Itachi and Kisame and put so much distance between them. It would take the pair of them nearly half an hour to trot through the dark until they got to the section Shisui said was property belonging to Danzo. There was an open cavern above a river of water Sakura prayed wasn't sewage that broke off into several directions.

"There are a lot of different ways to get there, but we're going to take the centermost tunnel," Shisui said pointing it out for Sakura to see. She recognized it from the maps and schematics left behind in her file. "We'll stay together for a little while longer, but you'll be taking the high road. Try and keep me in sight and follow my lead. You know what to look for?"

She thought about being sassy and saying something sarcastic but she bit it back. This was a mission, she wasn't going to let herself act so familiarly and send the wrong message. "I got it." She nodded and he grinned before taking off with her on his heels.

Emerging from the tunnel there was another underground chamber, but this one had vaulted ceilings and electric hangings down below where a few desks had been set up. No bodies. Sakura climbed up with expert grace, digging her nails into the stone work and staying high up till she found a pipe thick enough to follow under. Shisui ran between the desks, looking for computers or papers he could memorize in a glance, but nothing seemed of use. He waved over his head and then ran into another room connected by the same pipe she hung from. Sakura pulled herself up and crawled along it, not once daunted by the fall she was daring.

The next room was a bit nicer looking, but it had occupied, meaning Shisui kept to the shadows, watching and waiting. The two other figures in the room wore all black and donned similar white faced masks. It was impossible to see anything they could recognize for future reference. They didn't even know if they were human and not some robot or cyborg variant.

The two men were looking over a metal coated crate of materials. Shisui couldn't see what it was, but Sakura could. Expecting guns or weapons she was disappointed to see food packages, the kind that went into water and tasted like shit but gave you all the vitamins you needed. There were eight other boxes, and the pair checked the last four before resealing them and leaving the room, writing something down on a paper chart attached to the last crate. That was a tip off-no electronic records. 'Shady stuff,' Shisui mouthed, grinning and enjoying the tension far too much.

Attached to this room were several doors, none of them with pipes leading into them. Shisui called her down and she followed, scaling the side of the wall with minimal difficulty. The first two rooms were supply rooms, both stocked with the same food rations. The last door was locked.

"Watch my back?" Shisui turned away from her and started on the lock while she was painfully aware of every detail in the room until she heard a click.

She knew this room was different from the other even before he had the door open all the way. It was cold, terribly cold inside, but there was light. A short hallway and the black room opened up into something larger with high ceilings coated in reflective panels.

"What the hell?" The floor of the room was lined with shelves, open and exposed to show off what was lining them. "What are these things?" Sakura reached for one but stopped, not knowing if her touching would set off anything. Shisui beat her to it, pulling one of the obelisks down to inspect. It was tall as his forearm but thin enough to fit in his hand, seamless and purely black on all four sides.

"These hold the memories and personal data of enhanced experiments. I have my own, I got to take it with me, but if you were abducted and forcefully experimented on your captor would own yours." He looked to her and remembered. "The Oto people would have yours if they still kept it. You haven't regained any of your memories yet, right?"

When Sakura shook her head he sighed, replacing the OBelisk on the shelf. "What does that mean?" Sakura asked, feeling sick. "They have my memories?"

"Theoretically? Some just throw out the data or don't repress your memories at all. Pein was in charge of his own operation and never had that happen to him, so his Obelisk was mostly empty and didn't need it. Um, it's old technology, the kind from before the Domes. I don't know how to work them very well, no one does."

Sakura felt sick and excited and too nervous to breath all at once. Her memories existed. There was an end game now. She swallowed her emotions, ducking her head a bit more so her hood hid her expressions. "If there are these many here than what does that mean for Danzo. He has an enhanced soldier for each Obelisk here."

"At least," Shisui added, taking a video feed of the room. "There could be more."

"You have a number?" Sakura asked, running a calculation in her own head. 'If each shelf held four and each cart held five shelves and each row held…'

"I got it. From this, he has over two hundred enhanced."

"Do we know the strength or modifications of his enhanced?" Enhancements could mean a face lift or a full body makeover. Hanabi and Hidan were both enhanced humans, one was more dangerous in a fight than the other.

"We can't read these without a DNA match or a specialized reader, but you can roughly tell how much data is inside by temperature." He picked up another obelisk and then passed it into her hand. "It's warm, but not hot. That's why the room needs to be kept so cold."

Sakura put the Obelisk back and picked up another pair. "Same."

They went through the rows and picked up and felt as many as they could, with most of the Obelisks feeling identical. After they reached the end Sakura found one that was hot and Shisui found one that was almost too hot to hold. He cursed, putting it back and reaching for her. "Hidan was that hot," he explained, pulling her along and out the way they came, pausing to check the coast. "We'll look for more cold rooms and then bounce. We're on thin ice as is."

Sakura nodded, following his lead while keeping to the high places and shadows.

She kept track of time as best as she could in her heart while following Shisui around patrols and into dark rooms with more food and more clothing meant for war. The more she saw the more it looked like they were getting ready for something big.

The only found one more cold room, but with the door locked and heavily patrolled, they could only guess to the contents until Sakura shimmied up a pipe and dipped into a vent blasting cold air. She followed that into the room and saw that it was occupied by a boy in brown hair and a white mask running tests in front of a computer. From up high she could see the room was nearly the same size with nearly the same amount of Obelisks, but couldn't touch any of them to see what temperature they might be. If this room had a computer and a person inside it, were these enhancements more precious?

She didn't have the chance to climb down and check, because just then the masked figure turned around and opened another door to let in another pair of males in masks. Of all the patrols they had run into, none of them were obviously female.

Deciding not to press her luck, she shimmied back out and found Shisui waiting in the shadows. He pulled her to him and pressed her close, keeping them from being seen. "Itachi and Kisame are here. While Danzo is distracted we need to make our exit pronto."

Sakura nodded, understanding. '"I took a video for you."

His dark eyes were bright in the shadows, matching his wide smile. Sakura flinched, feeling as if he was going to lean into her more and kiss the side of her face. She didn't know why she thought that, but he didn't. A second later they were running back into the darkness, following the way they came and then deviating for a new exit.

And just when they thought it would be clean and easy, the room opened up into a training field with half a dozen bodies sparring against one another. And that was fine, they could go around and find another way out, Shisui knew nine more, but the scene below was too captivating to leave.

The sparring partners were killing each other. One pair after the other, they went hard until one had a knife sticking out of his gut and left to bleed out on the mat. Shisui gripped her shoulder hard and she knew this wasn't like the other touches. He was holding onto her like a lifeline. Looking back she saw his eyes were wide and haunted.

Another body fell. "Shisui?" the blood pooled out, dark and thick before running down the mat and off the edge and he couldn't look away.

"They're kids."

Sakura looked again and saw that he was right. They were shorter and thinner than the others with long arms and ears that stuck out from behind their masks. Maybe they were teenagers, but still children. She wasn't that young anymore.

"It's graduation for them," Shisui whispered sorrowfully. "This is what he's made them into."

Sakura looked back down at the arena and counted three bodies. The ones who had blood on their knives still just stood there, staring down at their kill. She wondered if they felt what the should be feeling, or the drugs and science in their blood made them into something less than human. Were they really the monsters everyone believed enchantments to be? Maybe they were monsters not because of the danger their might posed, but how little the felt when they saw blood. Had Sakura stopped when she killed the fighter from Oto? Had she felt the appropriate feelings for someone washed in bloodshed? All she remembered was hunger.

No one screamed or cried out or roared in the fury of the fight when the pair turned and left to find a new way out. They killed too quietly and it made her nervous. Swallowing, Sakura looked back over her shoulder and saw a fourth body had fallen to the floor, but her mask had come off in the process and her long red hair was a messy halo around her face. Her eyes were wide and frozen, searching the heavens for an answer as the pool beneath her petite breasts grew.

She recognized the picture. She felt the memory in her bones and knew she had been that girl at one point. No one ever came to rescue her and no one would rescue this one dead girl in a sea of monsters. Sakura wasn't even a girl anymore, as she turned away. She forgot how to be a girl, she was a monster now.

They left the tunnels behind and found an exit that led to a parking garage where Shisui had stashed a pair of bikes for them to ride back on. If someone was watching the tunnels they wouldn't see the same red bike they had come in on. It was part of his plan and something the Akatsuki appreciated when operating with discretion.

It was the end of the day and everyone was exhausted, but Sakura turned her intel in to Konan and Pein after Shisui and then took off to find a place to crash for the night, knowing she couldn't go back to the nest with the other girls, and not having the heart to tell Konan that her need was immediate.

Konan probably knew either way, since she called out to Sakura with an expression that expected something. Sakura just shook her head and headed back for the door. She stopped when she felt Konan slip a chip into her palm and turned to see the blue haired woman so close.

"When you're ready," Konan said. Sakura looked down at her hand and saw a blue chip with a white flower on the one side and a barcode on the other.

Sakura nodded and found her bike in the garage where she left it. She drove till the done shed it's lights and all the world had to offer were neon signs and open bar disco halls. She drove and drove and drove till she was lost.

* * *

Waking from the handmade hammock of wires tangled together from abandoned poles Sakura rolled and dropped to the ground and found her bike under the tarp where she left it.

She felt better after a sleep. She didn't feel so much like the person she had imagined herself to be when she watched that girl die. She felt better. She felt fine, and fine didn't mean good, but it didn't mean terrible either.

She felt like riding, so she did until her tank was near dry and had to refuel it at a dinky two pump station that never saw much traffic. She had been paid well for her work with the Akatsuki on her last mission, but her bike wasn't electric, and the type of gas she used was more on the expensive side because it was for racing vehicles.

She would need money to upkeep her bike, also her body required food. She didn't feel hunger prominently, but when she ate she found she ate to excess as a side effect for her mutations. She burned calories at a higher rate and while food wasn't expensive, she needed a lot of it often. There would be other things too, like a roof over her head and a place to park her bike without worry for who would come along in the night to take it.

She wanted to believe she was fine on her own and didn't need anyone, but she at least needed money, or a job.

There was a kiosk nearby so she scanned her arm and pulled up the menu after the little Peridot girl welcomed her to the city and asked her to vote on the weather.

Sakura clicked SUNNY and then canceled the screen, going instead to a directory for local job listings.

Temari had showed her how to do this when she signed up for the fights. The disks were heavy in her breast pocket and she knew she could call on any of them if she wanted to, but she wanted to find her own way first.

Fights? No, she cleared that option from her search results. Escort services? Nope. Competitive driving? Nothing posted. Security detail? She could work with that.

There was a place not far from where she was that was looking for extra security. It was an establishment that had a history and seemed decent enough. It was a club, there were sure to be plenty of illegal dealings involving drugs and God knows what, but all she had to do was stop people without hand stamps from going inside. It sounded more like being a bouncer than security, but maybe they wanted to feel good about themselves.

She queued the listing and then picked up a few more to try out. She had half a day left to wast before dark and there were things she wanted to do, and foods she wanted to eat.

The first place took one look at her and shut the door. The second place did the same thing, but they at least laughed at her before chasing her away. The third place wasn't much better.

She had a restaurant, a office complex, and the club from before to try out before she got really frustrated and did something she would regret. She tried the office complex before the other two because they were practically neighbors. The office complex looked legit from the outside so she didn't have many hopes, but they asked to see her work history and looked her up when she said she was seeking employment with the security detail.

"You do not have much of a work history to look at."

She had been in this world for what seemed like four weeks. For all she knew, she was a clandestine princess who owned a whole city before her memories were wiped. They probably wouldn't have appreciate the sass though. "Everyone has to start somewhere?"

"I can see you do have some skill, impressive fight record, though it leaves a bit to be desired." The man turned off the monitor and looked at her with folded hands and half lidded eyes. "You're young so please take this as advice. Build up a resume, enter some more easy competitions and establish a credible history."

"Almost all the fighting rings are run by the Akatsuki though."

He nodded. "Makes sense, they practically own this city." He looked her over again and inclined his head. "We can not employ you at this moment with so little to go on. We do wish you luck in your efforts, however. I'm sure you'll find something."

Sakura nodded, keeping her mouth shut. She bowed respectfully and left the office not knowing how to feel. She had two more places to try before she rented a room for the night, because she wasn't sleeping outside again.

Both were on the other side of town but situated across the street from one another, and she got a feeling why they both wanted security. She tried the restaurant first, knocking and being surprised with an actual audience. A man looked her over, shrugged, then took her to the back to hang out in a hallway before flagging the manager down. The manager looked up her and down as well, but in a different way that made her almost snarl in warning. If he noticed her knuckled whitening he didn't say anything, but took her to a back room open to the hallway.

Much like the last place, they looked her up and went through her history. Their connection was spotty though so it took the manager a while and while her files loaded he made small talk. "You know what we do here?"

Sakura didn't want to answer, but she ended up saying, "You serve food?"with a voice that sounded unsure.

He regarded her a moment then shrugged. "Sure, that too."

Drugs, illegal things, bad things. It was hard to pretend it wasn't shady, what she was walking into. Maybe she should go back to the fights. Maybe she should try and build up her reputation and earn her money that way. Maybe she could contact Konan and-

Whining from another nearby room cut off her train of thoughts. The manager cursed and excused himself, standing up and leaving the room. Sakura didn't even feel bad about standing up and following him at a distance, confident in her ability to remain undetected and get back before he knew she even left. Another back room, this one with a door to outside. She could smell the garbage and knew it was an alleyway.

The manager was speaking to someone, sounding pissed about whatever it was he saw. "Another one? Fuck, you know they don't all like 'em whiney."

"What else are we-"

Sakura strained to hear the rest and see around the corner. There was another tall man in the room and behind him was a girl with red hair and tear stained cheeks. She was small and thin and looked ready to fall over, but she had pretty features she would be sure to grow into one day. Sakura felt tight in her throat.

"I don't have enough clients who want children to keep more than four."

"They wear out so soon though, you'll need a new one soon."

Drugs, illegal things, bad things. She knew this was a possibility. She lived in a city thick with sin. She was a product of it. Her brain was a mess. Volunteer.

"I wanna go home."

It was the first thing the girl said since being dragged in but no one paid her any mind and no one looked like they would anytime soon. She tried to say something more and the man that brought her in hit her with the back his hand before saying something more to the manager.

She wasn't in the shadows anymore and they were staring at her. Sakura had said something, but her mind was a mess and there were oceans roaring in her ears. She could barely hear herself think. She said something about letting the girl go, but it wasn't clear to her. No, no oceans. It was her blood that was roaring with anger in beneath her skin. They were all watching her now.

"Let her go," she said again.

"This bitch, coming in her asking for work and for money and telling me how to run my business-"

Sakura's mouth felt tight at the gums when she snarled. "You're in violation of a lot of fucking laws here, so let her go." Petite fangs nearly cut her lips, but slid over one another with ease. She barely even noticed them. Her hands felt angry and large. She couldn't hear what they were saying.

The man in the doorway was tired of it though. He pulled out a gun and shot Sakura in the breastbone and again under her ribcage. She fell hearing screaming and cursing and the manager complaining about her blood staining the floor and having to clean up her mess. The girl was screaming.

Her mouth was hungry, hungry, hungry, and her body was on fire.

It was dusk and she was a mess of blood and gore. Nightclubs were starting to turn on and businesses that flourished after dark were turning on their signs, but Sakura didn't move. She was upstairs on one of the beds, sitting on the edge staring out the window. A man was dead at her feet in this room too. She lost count of how many she'd killed. The girl was long gone, as were the other seven females working in rooms upstairs. Four had been children; only one seemed actually sad about leaving.

Sakura didn't know how much time had passed but when she felt the bed dip behind her she looked up and saw the sky wasn't the same shade it had been when she entered. "How did you know I was here?"

Konan shifted so that she was in Sakura's limited line of vision. "I didn't. This location has been on my watch list for months now. I was waiting for Nageto to authorize funds to purge it once we had proof. I guess that's not necessary now."

Sakura lifted her head, gathering strength. She was exhausted and the leftover Chinese food swiped from a table in one of the escort rooms hadn't been enough to fill her. Her nostrils flared as the smell woke her up. Konan had a deep dish with beef strips, white rice, green beans and some other white vegetable she couldn't remember the name to. With thinly veiled restrained Sakura reached for the dinner and ate.

"After I arrived I checked the cameras. I saw everything." Sakura didn't even pause in her eating so Konan went on. "I've transferred some funds for exterminating this nuance, the video feed was enough to justify the payroll. In addition to the funds you will find a letter of recommendation. You can use it to get the job at the club across the street."

Sakura paused, licking rice from her upper lip. "How did you know about that."

Konan spared Sakura a look that was half lidded, tired, and amused all at once. "I have my ways. I might not be Deidara, but I know how to get into places. I thought about securing you a property in one of our buildings as well, but you will want to do that on your own if you haven't come to me for help yet."

"What makes you think I haven't gone to anyone else, or that I could." The deep dish was nearly empty and she still craved food.

"Because you're smart, Sakura. Those boys need a season to get their hormones under control before they know better than to blindly jump you at the first opportunity. It's why you can't stay with the other Harpies." Konan shook her head, eyes heavy with memory. "Damn hormones."

Sakura dropped her fork into the bowl and it echoed loudly, clanging against the bare sides. She was thirsty now so she stood and made for the door but stumbled and fell, forgetting her pants were ribbons for her to trip all over. She was a mess of dried blood both hers and not. Her clothing pieces were a mess, she couldn't get away with wearing what she had on now anywhere else in the city.

Knowing the restaurant upper floors doubled as a brothel Sakura reached for the wardrobe, finding plenty of cosplay outfits and a few toys. Konan didn't blush, but she did raise her eyes at a few things.

Sakura found a pair of micro shorts and a busier top she could wear in place of her ruined bra. She'd need to buy a new set of clothes that were more practical, but this would work for now. Not caring that she had an audience, Sakura began to change. From the bed Konan collected her things and chuckled.

"It was silly of me to think you needed a reference letter. They'll take you in just like that, not experience needed."

Sakura grumbled, finding a studded leather jacket she could wear over the suggestive top. There were heels at the bottom and a pair of silver pumps ended up fitting her. She missed the heels with the retractable blades and wondered if it was wrong to go back for them. Hanabi could help her sneak them out.

"That tattoo…" Sakura tuned and saw that Konan was looking at the vulture on her thigh. It was starting to fade, but she had a couple more days before she had to go back to get it permanently inked. Konan looked up at Sakura and set her lips in a line. "It's fitting. Keep it."

"Thanks."

Konan nodded, standing and moving to stand over the bloated body of the man Sakura had killed earlier. "Also, if you feel like you need to blow off some steam the way you did with these men." She kicked the man with her heel and her shoe came away red. "There are some underground passages that run a bit too close to Pein's tower. He wanted someone to go down and kill whoever he found lurking. Details are in the mail."

Konan passed Sakura and was on her way down the stairs when Sakura's voice stopped her. "The Akatsuki are not a nobel organization. Maybe at one point they were, but they're businessman now." She paused the silence made each of her words weigh heavier. "We're not good people."

"Sakura, haven't you heard? We're not people at all…." Konan started down the stairs but Sakura heard the rest of the woman's words all the same. "We're monsters."

* * *

Shisui had dreams about her. When she hadn't sought him out after the end of their mission he wasn't surprised, but that didn't mean he wasn't disappointed. It was still a let down to have to go back to the dark of his apartment and wait for hours and then days with no sign of the little bird.

Pleasing himself had not been as fun as he had hoped it to be either. At the end of it all he was still frustrated and hungry for something that wasn't food. He couldn't remember a time he had been this infatuated with a creature.

The only thing that made it worse was that his favorite cousin was in much the same boat except Itachi liked to suffer more and made sure to drag out his brooding with more work and less play. Itachi didn't think it 'proper' to dream of the things he couldn't have. Shisui didn't think dreams served as a substitution to anything, but they were good enough to tie him over until the courting ran it's course.

After another empty day Shisui cam back to a television monitor he let run without watching and made himself something to drink. He didn't so much as eat as he did find some food to chew on before retiring to his bed and his dreams.

It was warm in his room, but instead of turning on a fan or adjusting the temperature he discarded his clothes. Hand to his bare chest he knew most of the heat was coming from him. As an enhancement he ran naturally hot, but his flushed state was due to more than just his enhancements he was sure.

His mouth went dry at the thought of her and the blood rush was immediate. No one was around to hear the sounds he made or watch him turn over in bed and pretend to see her there. It was unhealthy, they would say, but he didn't care. No one cared about his healthy when he was killing at the tender age of eleven, they couldn't say anything to him now when he thought of her, blushing from his touch, biting her lip and tugging on the covers to hid herself better.

He imagined the way she would sound saying his name, shy at first and a little bit breathy. He knew this was all new to her, but that was okay since he would guide her. Whatever experience she might have had in the past as an adolescent didn't matter because it was beyond the limits of her memory.

She'd be shy and unsure, maybe she'd pull away at first, but the shape and feel of her wrist under his fingers came to him, he'd tug her back, kissing the inside of her palm and whispering secret things into her skin, secret thing that made her blush, secret things about how much he wanted her in all the ways possible.

"Shisui." He could practically hear his dreams now.

He swallowed, closing his eyes and letting the picture paint itself.

Her hands found purchase on the backs of his shoulders and held fast, arms looped under his to pin him to her as he ravaged her neck with tender kisses too soft to be anything other than tempting. He knew where to kiss her to make her purr. The veins and arteries trembled when he nipped lightly and she arched a bit under him.

He hummed his pleasure against her skin and she breathed his name again. Back arching their hips brushed and it was like madness. The feeling of all of her against all of him was too good and too right and too perfect.

He growled his approval and she gasped his name again, eyes dazed and heady with the lust she had been fighting back for so long. Now she was finally free to open up to him and he adored her in it.

His hands were wide and long, running down the length of her leg and up her thigh, over the tattoo he knew about even though he shouldn't have. A handful of flesh in his hand made her squeak and her lips parted in a pant for more. His lust was maybe greater than hers because he would give it to her just to see that look on her face again. He was watching heaven when something he did made her hiss or gasp or moan in response.

"Shisui."

He bit the lobe of her ear and his voice was a rumble and a purr. "Sakura."

He dreamed of kissing her, but this was always the part that left him wanting. In his imagination there was always something missing and it drove him mad. The missing element to his formula. He was incomplete without it-without her.

He turned over in bed and felt the frustration in his hand and breathed heavy, knowing the night would end in darkness and solitude.

* * *

Security for the Neon Bunny Disco Hall was easier than she assumed it to be, and a lot more relaxed. She didn't have a uniform to stick to, but all security personal had to wear neon bracelets that identified them as staff/security, allowing them access everywhere.

And while she technically worked alongside the hired muscle, it was the hostesses that really took Sakura under their wings to bond with and share things with. One heard about her clothing situation and took her to a cheap thrift store for a whole new wardrobe before opening on her second day in.

She didn't know if she could, but she lasted a whole week, finding ways to live life for a few hours in the daytime and all the hours after dusk. She rented a temporary room from an factory outlet on the rooftop level where no one went because of structural integrity.

It was a steal on account of the owner being the uncle of one of the women working at the sleazy Chinese restaurant, The Golden Tiger, where Sakura went wild. His niece had gone of her free will and the family could do little to stop her, but still they were grateful that Sakura's efforts chased her back home.

She slept between the rafters, seeming to take pleasure in the feeling of being precariously perched like the bird she was designed after. She felt safe up high. There weren't a lot of people who could chase her up so high and fewer who would.

During the week she went back to Kisame and got her tattoo partially inked onto her thigh and promised to come back for the rest of it as well as another one on her arm to frame her barcode once she felt settled in at her new job.

On her third visit to the parlor she noticed it was mostly empty, with only one other artist clocked in to work on his own leg at a station further from Kisame's usual set up.

Kisame led her to the chair she used last time and rolled up her shorts to expose the rest of the tattoo. It wasn't large, but it was painfully detailed and Kisame wanted it perfect so he took his time. Sakura didn't seem to mind since conversation with Kisame was always easy.

"So, this new gig…they flexible hours?" Kisame asked, angling his pen so that the feathers came out curved and lifelike on her vulture.

"There are shifts I can drop and pick up, but it's a night job, pretty standard. I could take off if I wanted to. There have only been a few instances where I've had to do something violent…enough people seemed to have heard about my adventure at The Golden Tiger to know better."

"That's good, you're building a reputation." He paused to admire his partly finished work before continuing. "Will you be doing more stuff for Akatsuki?"

"My boss already said if you guys ask I'm off. Apparently he's scared shitless of the idea of you closing his business down or something."

"Maybe he's afraid of being torn apart by a pretty girl with pink hair."

Sakura rolled her eyes at his comment. "Speaking of that, do you guys have a lot of contract employees, because one of the bouncers at the club was rumored to have a history with y'all, same as his son."

"What's his name?"

"Zabuza Momochi, and his ward Haku."

Kisame paused, lifting his pen and staring at her thigh. It had been such a lovely thing to work on but all of a sudden he was very distracted. "They both work there?"

"Just Zabuza, but Haku comes by often enough. He wants to do drinks but Zabuza wants Haku to stay with a different day job that's safer. I think he's younger than me, but he's not in a school." Sakura watched Kisame for his reaction and frowned when she found his expressions close to unreadable. Kisame was always hard to gauge. Sometimes she didn't know if he was fed up with her or totally chill because of his his bitch face rested. "Do you know him?"

"Still do. We were a part of the same assignation cell before breaking off for other things back when I was younger. He's good, not as good as me, mind you, but we've hired him in the past for Akatsuki jobs."

"Just Zabuza?"

"Just him, he won't let Haku get mixed up in that lifestyle, even though the boy can hold his own. His ward is a good heart, soft soul, whatever you want to call it. At least I know you're working with someone strong. He'll do a good job helping keep the place safe, but to have two such heavy hitters you must expect trouble."

"The disco hall is huge and it's so many levels. It takes a lot of manpower to work the floors, but you're right. Most of the other security detail aren't enhanced like we are. No one else is worth mentioning."

Kisame grinned, tugging on the blue, neon zipper that dangled off her yellow jacket. "Not even the floor girls? You look better in color than when I last saw you on mission detail all in black."

Sakura rolled her eyes groaning. "Oh please, not you too. Everyday there is someone commenting on how I look."

"You don't like it when I say you look nice?"

Sakura pouted a bit, staring at a far wall and pretending it was more interesting than watching his face for expressions. "It's not that. It's just that how I look seems to be the only thing I get complimented on and that's nice but sometimes I wonder if that's all I am to people, you know? Like, I know better, but I don't hear it from others and I start to doubt even thought I should know better that I have more value than what other's seen in terms of my appearance, but it's weird, you know?"

"No, actually I wouldn't. Have you seen my face before?" His comment came out sounding dry and flat but when Sakura met his eyes she couldn't help but laugh. Her reaction was enough to make him smile and he felt his face glow a little with heat that made his pale blue skin tint purple in the light.

"You're more than what you look like, you know that." He dipped his head again and began to trace the finer details of her flower with his pen. "That's better. I like it when you smile, and you have an amazing laugh, the kind that makes you want to forget bad things and just laugh right along. And it's inspiring to know that you're even able to laugh after all that you've been through. You're strong and resilient and you're brave for coming so far with so little. Those are things people can see in you right away."

Sakura turned the collar of her yellow jacket up and hid the bottom half of her face behind the fabric as Kisame colored her thigh in black ink. "Why do I get the feeling that you're trying to embarrass me?"

"You're just not used to people looking at you so intimately. Ah, this bird looks great. I'm almost done with the flower and then I'll bandage you up. No swimming, not poking, you know the drill."

Sakura looked over the edge of her jacket down at her leg and smiled wide. "It's so pretty."

"It's a fucking vulture."

"It's a pretty vulture."

"You're the pretty vulture." Sakura made a frustrated sound and pulled her jacket up again causing Kisame to laugh. "Don't hide."

"Then stop saying weird things."

Kisame laughed again and stood up to get something more for his ink pen. When he came back Sakura wasn't looking at him, but he grabbed her leg anyway and turned it so he could draw on the longer petals that stretched around her thigh. She had done a good job staying so still through the entire process and he wondered if that was due to her high pain threshold. How much did she feel when he held her thigh under his hand to keep the skin steady?

"Did the flowers mean something or were they just picked out because they look pretty?"

"Can I say both?" Sakura asked, not sounding like she was going to elaborate.

The Imperial Chrysanthemum was large and far reaching behind her vulture's head, reminding him of power and authority. The peonies were very feminine flowers, often colored in pink and looking very girly. He had seen several girls come in asking for such flowers because of similar meanings. The third type of flower clustered under the down folded wing was of poppies, and he knew poppies well enough. Drug flower, sleeve flower, the dream flower. It was popular enough all on its own, but also beautiful.

"Do you ever get dreams?" he asked, seemingly out of the blue.

Sakura made a scrunched up face. "What kind of question is that?"

"Some kids don't dream anymore after their operations. It's been year since I last saw anything in my sleep. I used to like dreams, at least the ones I remember."

Her scrunched up expression softened. "I've never heard of that before. As far as I knew, I was the only one who didn't…remember dreaming. Hanabi says we all dream, some of us just don't remember. I had hoped it wasn't permanent but that's not what it looks like anymore I guess."

"It's not terrible," Kisame huffed, regretting ever mentioning it. "Better off with the thing that keeps you alive, right. There are tons of things better than dreams from sleep. They have drugs for it too if it ever gets too bad, but I wouldn't recommend it. You see a lot of that sort of traffic at your disco hall?"

"Oh yeah, plenty," Sakura nodded. "But I've only ever had to step in twice to break it up and that was because these guys were getting pushy with their lady friends. Screw yourself and see if I care, but I'll be damned if you use force on someone else in front of me."

"That's very telling of your personality." Kisame pulled his pen away and opened a chamber, switching out an ink vial for something lighter than black and then running it into a testing pad before using it to fill in the shadows which were the last things. "Hero mentality, others called it. You're not very concerned with your own safety, but you're protective of those under you or of those who can't help themselves. You wouldn't be ideal for this organization."

"I said something like that to Konan before." Sakura watched as the shadows made her tattoo near come to life on her leg. "You're not a noble group. You're a business."

"We learned early on not to try and play hero, because it just sends you to bed feeling sick about all the people you can't save. This world will never be the utopia Nageto once dreamed it to be, but at least now we're rich, eh."

Sakura hummed thoughtfully, looking over at one of the binders left out on the table next to her chair. Absently she flipped through the first few pages, feeling Kisame's pen leave her thigh. He stood to go replace his tools and get her the bandage she needed to keep the site clean until the irritation subsided. The pages were laminated, offering little resistance as she dragged her fingers across the images. She liked looking at the drawings, and a few of them were ones she hadn't seen on the online catalogue. The original artists no longer worked with Kisame.

Her fingers froze on the page, her eyes narrowing at the black and white drawing in the corner of the page. "Kisame." He came when she called, dropping his pens atop a cart to better brace himself on the side of her chair and lean over. Sakura pointed to the drawing of the black obelisk. "Where did this come from?"

"That's an Obelisk, where the memories and data of enhanced are stored. Too many people got sick of seeing it and we pulled the design. A freelancer submitted the original artwork…a kid from Tanzanite. Why?"

"On our last mission was the first time I've ever heard of these things. Do you think Oto has mine, that my memories still exist somewhere?"

"Maybe." He leaned further and saw the darkness in her eyes and the way her whole expression seemed to surrender to something less bright. It was clear that she was bothered by the thought. Memories stolen were often a touchy subject for people like Sakura. It shouldn't have surprised him. "Sakura?"

Hearing her name called she shook her head and turned away, closing the book. "If they're out there, it's something I should try to find." She faked a smile for him and tugged on his arm, sliding out of the chair. Standing next to him she barely reached his shoulder, eve in her heels. "Thanks for today. I'll see you again soon for the arm."

"Stay safe, kid."

* * *

The club had many levels, some larger than others. The lowest level was nothing but a dance floor, while above along the walls there were platforms connected by stairs that housed VIP tables and lounge areas. The Neon Bunny Disco Hall was larger than that though, with the first level being all bars and a subdued dance floor and the floors above that being all lounge and private spaces. All together there was something like eight levels to the club, and Sakura had to patrol one of them during her shift.

Zabuza and Sakura were the ones who most often got stuck with basement duty, because the dance floor was the one floor with the most drama that ended up in fist fights. More often than not it was Sakura who had to shimmy across the floor of dancers to find the jackass and haul him out. She was better at it than Zabuza but the didn't mean she enjoyed it any.

Sakura was on such a duty for the next four and a half hours, perching herself on one of the platforms. She tense when she felt someone approach and turned to see a pair of girls taking the stairs down. She sat up on the railing, recognizing the pair.

"Sakura!" Hanabi exclaimed, jumping from the second to last step to reach Sakura faster. The older girl caught her in a messy hug that could have been a trip if Sakura hadn't possessed such keen reflexes. Hanabi just giggled.

"What are you doing here?" Sakura asked looking to Tenten. "Did you know I worked here?"

"Yeah, but this club is sick for bi booty hunters so I would have showed up sooner or later," Tenten laughed. "But Konan did tell us and it helped me get off my butt sooner rather than later. Isn't this place great?"

Sakura hadn't noticed the increase Tenten was talking about, but to be fair Sakura didn't pay attention to who was kissing who, so long as it wasn't her. "It's nice to see you guys. I'm glad you're doing well."

Hanabi pouted. "Don't be stiff with us. You're allowed to be angry for getting kicked out. Hana is still kinda mean, but things seemed to have died down over the past week especially."

"Then it was good I left."

Tenten's smile fell away, replaced with something a bit more stern. "No, it wasn't good that you left. It was necessary, but it wasn't good." Something like anger made her jaw clench. "It sucks that we were ruined like this, that we're suffering from symptoms we can't control. It makes no sense, but that's how they see us and that's how they've altered us-to be the bitchy agitated and territorial monsters from story time, but you're no less a Harpy for it. Maybe…when we figure this out, it'll be safe to hang out and live together again."

Sakura smiled and it was a reflex, not something she intended. "Yeah, I'd like that."

Hanabi reached forward to hug Sakura around her middle. "You'll always be a Harpy."

Tenten grinned but rolled her eyes, pretending to be annoyed as she tugged on Hanabi's hair. "Yeah, yeah, okay marshmallow, we can get cute later, I've got scouting work I need your eyes for. We need to get moving."

Sakura waved the two girls off, feeling a little lighter. On the way down Tenten looked back and called out 'nice tats by the way' over her shoulder. Absently, Sakura reached down to run her hand over the exposed markings on her thigh. Her shorts were short enough that they only covered the top most part, but left everything else exposed.

It wasn't the first time she had been complimented on her tattoo, but it was one of the most meaningful comments since it was coming from a girl who understood a bit better what it really meant. Across her chest Tenten sported a small arrangement of thorns and roses with a sleeping sparrow caught. When Sakura asked about it Tenten explained about how she had been injected with sparrow DNA before it failed to bond and she was paired with a Burrowing Owl. It had been painful to feel something like a spirit die inside of her, and she remembered that.

Maybe it was better to have forgotten everything, even the details of what went on inside the labs at oto, but Sakura couldn't feel peace when there was such a void in her mind. She knew it was probably horrible, but she wanted to know. She needed to know who she was before and where she had come from. She need to color the blank fields of her mind.

Later that hour she was surprised by the arrival of her coworker, meeting her on the platform overlooking the dance floor. Sakura raised a delicate brown and he huffed in greeting.

"Boss said to switch. Too many twitchy VIPs," Zabuza said without emotion.

Sakura groaned. The VIP levels were the most uncomfortable to patrol, even if they were usually the safest. Theoretically, if someone wanted to come in and off a person it would be someone in the VIP rooms, so maybe it wasn't the safest place to be on duty, but so far it had been pretty safe. Regardless of how safe it actually was, it made Sakura feel out of place to stand outside a door while the occupants inside were so loud about all the things they were doing.

"Fine, I got it, what floor were you on?" She asked, rubbing her sore shoulder. Her wings were aching again.

"Floor 4."

Out of all the eight levels that made of the club there were five levels above ground and three below. The floors were labeled from top to bottom as 5-Privet Staff Floor, 4-VIP Metallic Lounge, 3-Bunny Dance Hall Lounge, 2-VIP lounge Neon, 1-Bar floor/entry level, S1-Floating lounge A, S2-Floating Lounge B and dancing cage rooms, and finally S3-Neon Bunny Dance Floor. The staff knew all the long and pretty names, but when talking to each other they shortened the floors to simple numbers because no one really cared that much about sounding attractive.

Every floor had it's perks and disadvantages, but the only one Sakura hated to serve on was the Bunny Dance Hall, because it was nothing more than a glorified strip hall with sometimes some live music. It rarely needed security so she and Zabuza were both spared often enough from that torture. In comparison the Metallic Lounge wasn't so bad, even if it was a VIP level.

"Okay, I got it. I'll head up there now. You got it here?"

Zabuza shot her a look that was almost insulted and Sakura tried to take some small joy in that moment. Zabuza was a lot like Kisame. She could believe they once worked together.

Sakura ran a hand through her hair, feeling the short side curl a little under her fingers. It was starting to grow out and she had to make a decision on if she wanted to trim it again or let it go. She was lazy and didn't want to do anything to it, but short hairstyles apparently required maintenance. It was a trivial thing to be worrying about, but she didn't care as she stepped into the glass elevator and rode it up the brightly colored tower to the fourth floor where all the high paying clientele hid away. It was a floor twice as expensive as the Lounge Neon.

The elevator slowed and the glass slid away to show off a clearer version of the richly decorated lounge. While other parts of the club were dark and neon themed, the Metallic Lounge was something out of old world fashion and style with gilded molding, red carpets, lush fabric pillows, and expensive greenery that had to be specially cared for. Diamond chandeliers hung from overhead frequently enough that the ceiling was hardly ever seen.

The center of the hall was surrounded by marble statues with gems embedded in the chests of dancing men and woman. Around the statues were open seats for people to laze about and receive attention from bunny girls and other customers. There were patterned divider screens that folded out like accordions to provide some privacy along with the plants, but most elected not to bother with them. The floor was private enough.

Further from the center there were increasingly more private rooms hidden into corners with more marble gem statues and exotic plants. The far walls had rooms that even had doors, but there were only a handful of them. Sakura circled the inner ring of the room first, staying discreet in her patrols before moving out. She lingered by the elevator and the stairwell longest, knowing those were the only two points of entry and both required expensive access.

She passed an round sectional with a pair of bunny girls leaning up against one another, looking tired and holding hands. A third was on the lap of a client. It took a second to see that they were safe before Sakura looked away.

It wasn't out of habit that she searched with her eyes for a time device or a clock that counted the hours. They were often hidden if ever present in an effort to distract the club visitors and trick them into staying longer or something like that.

"Looking for someone, sweet cheeks?" a younger male asked from the couch where he hung with a small group of males. All looked well to do, but young. Children, sons of men with power, spoiled brats, nothing more-she knew the type well. The one who addressed her eyed her up and down. "I could be someone for you."

Sakura flashed her wristband and moved on. They would know better than to mess with her or they could risk eviction. It was something she was thankful for.

She heard his voice over her shoulder, making no move to follow her. "Chee, cold ass."

She just rolled her eyes, used to worse. Zabuza got hit on enough from both the customers and the bunny girls, the latter of which he couldn't just threaten to throw out since they were also employees. It was easier for her to say no to the girls when they asked after her because Sakura didn't go stiff and silent in the face of sugared attention. Maybe Tenten was better suited to this line of work.

Going around for her third sweep of the room, feeling the hours weigh heavy on her mind, Sakura noticed something new out of the corner of her eye. Towards the back there was a corner hidden behind Marble and foliage, hanging outside that alcove was a single red Poppy and a Pink Peony entwined by the stems. The same two flowers she had picked out in addition to the Imperial Chrysanthemum. It was enough to engage her interest.

Drawing close she brace herself against the marble man and tried her best to glance around him and see inside the alcove without being too obvious, but she couldn't see the pale hand reaching for her wrist and dragging her in until it had her stumbling forward.

"Hey," she hissed, holding up her free hand with the band. "You can't-eh, what are you doing here?"

His dark eyes twinkled in the diamond colored light and Sakura felt queasy again. "I'm here to visit you, obviously." Itachi turned her wrist over in his hand and teased the base of her palm where her veins stood out. "You didn't think Konan was the only splendid hacker in our humble organization did you?"

"But the flowers…" She didn't try to pull away and she was sure he had noticed, his grin was that bright.

"My partner was the one who inked you art piece. He left sketches behind and drawing out where I could see them. I might have been more intentional in finding the correct version, but I think my diligence has paid off." He tugged her closer, moving his hand from her wrist to her elbow. His other hand reached back behind her head and he ran his fingers into her hair, curling and knotting there. "I missed you, my bird."

Sakura felt flushed with heat all over as she was tugged closer and closer to the long red couch where he hid. She felt the edge of the furniture and stumbled to brace herself with one knee between his spread legs. The hand on her elbow had moved again, sneaking up to cup her back and make her fold a little more towards him. He was sitting and she was partly standing, but with his height his head still came to her chest area where he touched his forehead to her breasts.

"I-Itachi, you can't…I'm working."

"They sent you up here to me because I asked. Do not forget who I am, my dearest dark thing." He looked up and his eyes were black, framed by sinfully long lashes just as dark. "I fear I was not as direct as needed in our last encounter. Did you not hear my call to you stir your bones? I've been calling for you. You ran from me."

It was so hard to breath. His voice made her feel hot and melted inside, like he was burning her into submission. She wanted to fold beneath him, a part of her died for it even as she voiced her protest. "You…can't."

"No, I've made up my mind and all else, family and honor, be damned. I can and I will." He tugged her closer and kissed the spot between her breasts through her clothes. She shivered and his hand on her back slipped further down to cup her.

She arched and with the loss of balance pitched forward to brace herself on his shoulders, on hand down on either side of his head. His shirt was thin and charcoal grey, light enough to see all the lines like cords and curves like sin that made up his body. He tipped back and one hand slipped-yes it slipped-and she felt the details of his back as his mouth found the base of her neck. She shivered at the touch and breath wasn't enough to keep her alive anymore.

"Itachi, this isn't…oh, oh."

"Do you want me to stop, to pull away from you?" His teeth were on her throat and the places where he had kissed her were still hot. She couldn't breath, her mind was dehydrated. She didn't want him to stop, she wanted him to eat her up like the black panther he really was.

"Why are you doing this to me?" She forced the words out, forced her mind to clear as best she could.

He kissed her again under her jaw and she arched without meaning to. He connected the edge of her bone right below the ear. "Because I want you with something like madness. I don't want to think anymore. All I can do is feel things when it comes to you." He bit the lobe of her ear then kissed it as if in apology. "Don't reject me. Whatever you do, don't push me away. I can not live on the dream of you as others can."

She was pulled closer still and her knee brushed the spot between his legs and he growled. She didn't have time to comprehend as his leg shifted, followed by the rest of his body. He was over her and she was pressed down into the red cushions of his couch, hair a pale rose halo around her face as he took her neck again, shifting so his body was over her's, hovering.

Sakura parted her lips for air to say something and he seized them with his own. It was sensual at first and then the hunger came. So short of air, her mouth was easy to pry open and take. He purred against her lips and she felt it echo throughout her body. He traced the roof of her mouth and underside of her tongue, sending off fireworks all throughout her body.

Under the influence of something primal Sakura met him in the kiss, shifting her shoulders and hips under him to meet his contact better. Her hands reached up to touch his chest, not to push him away, but to trace his lines the curves of his neck. Her fingers found his hair and it was softer than she imagined. He wasn't a bird but she thought of wings and feathers.

"Sakura," he growled her name and she shivered again to the touch.

Itachi shifted and moved down, pushing her shirt up and kissing her navel. It nearly sent her over the edge and it made him chuckle. She looked down at saw his rakish smile and knew he wanted her to moan again, to cry for him. He kissed her again and she nearly choked on the feeling. Her skin was so hot and his hands were there, taking in her heat. She felt like burning. Sweat made strands of hair stick to her face but she didn't care about moving them. He kissed her again, lower than her navel.

She arched, her hips moving with her shoulder as he traced a hand under her shirt, over her ribs and up her back, following veins of sensitivity. His hands held her, on behind her back and the other under her rear.

He moved and Sakura screamed, but not in the way he wanted. Itachi froze, eyes flashing red as Sakura's voice came out in a cry of pain. She pulled away and he felt it on his hand, the one behind her back. He pull it away and saw all the red staining his palm. Sakura moaned in pain and curled up into a ball, blood popping from the stubs of wings on her back. Her body was hot and in a dangerous way Itachi knew it wasn't all arousal.

He pulled away his shirt and turned her over, ignoring the marvel that was her body to focus on the two points of raised flesh with skin stretched thin, both were bleeding, one more heavily than the other. Itachi had seen her wing stubs before, but they were larger now, near bulging.

"It hurts," she breathed, eyes screwed shut in pain. Her body folded like something broken as she held herself.

Itachi reached for his mobile, cursing all the stars in the sky for his bad luck and for the sake that his precious one was in so much pain. Tonight was supposed to be a night for her to come undone under him, not bleed and suffer like this. He didn't know if something was terribly wrong of if this had to happen for her wings to grow back, but he wouldn't take chances.

Konan would come in a heartbeat. Until then Itachi moved Sakura so her back faced up and hold her hand as she gasped in pain and squeezed as a way of release. Her hair was damp with sweat and her whole body burned. It was almost warm, but it was almost too hot to touch, especially on her back around her wings.

Itachi whispered sweet things into her ear and blew kisses across her forehead, telling her things would be fine and she was brave and that he loved her and how he knew she would pull through. His heart throbbed with a strange pain to watch her. There was nothing more he could do.

"Water!"

Itachi looked up, seeing Konan in the entryway. She looked like she flew to get to where he was. "You came!"

She cursed at him. "Get her water, ice water, as much as you can. She's in a fever."

He didn't want to leave her, but he didn't think twice about it. He came back with an employee who carried a bin of ice and a second of chilled water. Konan had moved Sakura onto the floor and forced her to stretch out. She took the ice and spread it over Sakura, only to see it hiss and melt upon contact. She and Itachi poured more and he took a cube and slipped it into her mouth when Konan told him she was at risk of dehydrating like this.

"Its critical she be kept cool right now, or else she could die."

Itachi felt sick, but helped as dutifully as he could. Looking down, he saw her face pinched and strained, drained of color, but she wasn't crying out anymore. She had bit down and her jaw wouldn't be moved. She was strong, just like he said she was.

He moved to get more ice, but before he could he ran into Pein who stood just outside the doorway with a pair of ice buckets. There were dark looks between the two but no words as Pein moved in to help his sister in law with keeping Sakura cool.

Sakura jerked, her arm reaching out and then coming back as she felt something move through her body. She nearly screamed out but shook her head, burying her face into the carpet. Her breathing came and went with great heaves from her lungs, each one more dramatic than the last.

"Shh, you're going to be fine, Sakura, we're here," Konan called in a voice that was soft, but her eyes were fixed on her back, glued with concern. More ice melted between her shoulder blades.

Something in Sakura broke and she cried out into her hand, one half of her back snapping as blood and skin escaped. Soon the other mouth followed and both stretches of skin where gone, popped, shredded and forgotten. Sakura gasped, collapsing a little as two petite red wings stretched out and then folded limply against her back.

Konan's eyes were wide and something made them glossy as she watched Sakura's wings stretch again, awkward at first and then too tired to be anything but limp. "Amazing," she breathed. Even as small as they were, she could tell they would be massive one day. The bone structure was there for it. It would be enough for her to fly on.

"Will she be safe now?"

"She's out of danger, yes," Konan answered, never looking away from Sakura's wings to look at Itachi. "She'll be exhausted for a long time though It must have been a great pain to break free new bones."

Pein looked from his sister in law to Sakura's quiet form and then to Itachi. The metal faced man narrowed his eyes at the Uchiha and Itachi noticed, returning the gesture. "You were told not to be obscene."

Itachi didn't bother to smile, feeling the lack of motivation like metal in his mouth. He didn't have the energy to pretend to be civil. "This was not planned, I assure you."

"Stop it before you let it go too far," Konan bit in, her tone sharp with authority. Both males stiffened. "I'm taking her with me. Itachi, you can inform her employer of her absence. Assure him he will be reimbursed for her time and that this is not to reflect poorly on her. She'll be weak when she wakes up, and that could be a couple of days."

Pein looked down at Sakura and moved a strand of hair from her closed eyes, not missing how it caught in her lashes and stayed stuck until he pulled it up and away. "How do you know this?"

Konan looked to Pein and then to Sakura, eyes fixated on the red stained wings. "Because she's strong, and because I was a harpy too, once upon a time. This is what I was once a part of."

* * *

True to Konan's word, Sakura slept for a full day and was awake but too weak to move well or far on the second. Konan told Sakura when she woke that she had the rest of the week off. Kisame had offered to fill in for her even, but Zabuza and a few of the other staff agreed to pick up double to cover her shifts. They would be fine.

The third day Sakura left the bed behind, moving across the smooth wood flooring to grab hold of the brick interior walls and steady herself. There were large half moon windows letting in enough light and scenery to tell her she was high up, in an apartment belonging to Konan.

Sakura hadn't been strong enough to move yesterday, but by now she had recovered enough to stand and she felt that if she forced herself at first, walking would get easier. Her body felt lighter, like her bones were suddenly hollow inside. She pushed that thought out of her head and moved along the wall, not exactly used to the extra weight on her back or the empty feeling in her bones.

She was a new thing in this world but she knew how to survive as a new thing with no memories, so it wouldn't be so hard this time. There was a tray with water and biscuits she took to nibbling. She was hungry but she felt sick to eat so suddenly.

Outside it was gray and overcast, but not yet lonely enough for actual rain. Sakura knew she should go and find someone, tell them she was awake, but she wanted to be outside and none of the windows opened for so much as a breeze. All parts of her wanted to feel that free air, especially the pinkish white feathers of her wings.

Her wings should have been white, but the blood had gotten in between the layers and while washed, their color had stained. She missed the deep red color they had been at the tips. Lamb Vultures were known for rubbing their bodies in blood or red clay to adapt the color that made them so bright and eye catching. Maybe that is where her urges came from. She had the DNA of a bird, why not the inclinations of a bird?

In the hallway Sakura found a stairwell with a thin black railing that led up to what she could assume to be the roof. By the time she was halfway up walking felt normal again and she didn't need the wall. It didn't take long after that to reach the end. A platform in front of another heavy metal door with a straight latch stopped her advance. At least this one swung open easily enough when Sakura pulled the latch back. It made no sound and swung out on easy hinges.

This rooftop seemed better taken care of, there were plants and trees in pots placed around exhaust pipes and the other outstanding structures that were a part of the building's design. Sakura left the door open a crack and walked out, approaching the railing. There was a wind that was heavy with humidity and she could taste static on her tongue. It was an artificial storm, but the dome city was trying to pretend they were wild again.

"It won't rain."

Sakura turned, her wings stretching out in surprise before she knew to pull them back flat against her back. In the corner of the rooftop leaning up against the railing Pein stood with something between his fingers that burned red smoke. He lifted the stick to his lips, inhaled, and blue out a cloud of mauve.

"It can't rain?" He didn't seem upset that she was taking steps towards him, so she continued until she was an arm's reach away.

Pein looked up at the sky, a cloud of red at his fingers. "No, it can rain, they installed sprinklers in between the panels for such a display. The city can rain, but it never will. Our weather is decided upon by popular vote and no one wants to see it rain, even if it does get cloudy from time to time." He inhaled again, the stick on his lips. When he breathed out the cloud was brighter, sparking with shades of scarlet.

"When was the last time it rained?" Sakura asked, suspecting rain meant more to him than it did to her.

She didn't know how she felt about rain. She knew what it was, but she couldn't ever remember having any feelings about it. Did she hate it, did she miss it, was it important to her? Sometimes when she voted for the weather, there were only two options available, rain and overcast. This must be the reason why it cloudy now. People voted for this over the rain.

"I remember being younger, but it did rain. The voting was different back then. At that time you had to go through all the weather options, and the least popular were the last, but they were still chosen. When Akatsuki took over that was one of the things they changed, hoping to give more power back to the people."

"Do you not agree with what your brother and your group did?" Sakura asked, crossing her arms over her chest. Wind passed right through her, chilling her like she was made of holes.

"Agreeing with his decision was never an issue with me, and I never cared which way this wretched city went so long as my family was safe. They can have their freedoms or they can reject them. I doesn't matter to me how the ants under my shoe live or die. I just miss the rain."

His cigarette was shorter now, and kept changing shades from maroon to crimson to rose to fire red again. The cloud he surrounded himself with curled away and then was gone in the wind. When it had burned down to nothing his fingertips could hold he dropped the stub over the side of the railing, watching as the wind caught it and threw it away.

Pein reached inside the layer of his studded charcoal coat but paused, glancing to Sakura. "I'm sorry. I forgot myself. I was so wrapped up in my own thoughts I forgot to show you my manners. How are you feeling, Sakura?"

As if it was an answer Sakura stretched one wing without wincing. "Better. I can walk again. I think by tomorrow I'll be my usual self again."

He inclined his head respectfully in her direction. "You were quite the champion when we found you. You deserve those wings. They're just as lovely as one would think you to deserve. Congratulations."

Sakura looked over her shoulder at the feathered bone that waved in response. She was fond of her wings, and proud of how lovely they looked when Konan first brought in a mirror so Sakura could see what they looked like coming out of her back.

"You make it sound like I did something. All I did was scream and cry, anyone could have done that."

"You're modest. The procedure was painful, Konan assured me. If you had not bore the pain as well as you did then assisting you might have been more difficult. Please understand that your rebirth was no small display."

"I had no idea it would happen so suddenly. I was totally caught off guard. Temari told me about it a bit, but the details were lacking."

Something made Pein's expression darken. "Yes, for someone to have been there when you collapsed, Itachi was a lucky snake."

"No, more like I was lucky he knew to call Konan."

Sakura paused, her hand on her neck. She remembered Itachi in the room right before pain bloomed like a two headed flower on her back. It was enough to make her throat dry again. She had been so hot headed at the time she hadn't fought back like she should have. She wasn't…opposed to Itachi as a suitor, he was handsome and would make a protective partner, but she didn't know him well enough or even herself well enough to make that sort of commitment.

"Pein!" Sakura looked up, a new idea in her eyes. "You know about the obelisks, right? You know what they are used for?" When he nodded Sakura went on. "I want to find mine. Do you think Oto still has it or could it be in the lab you guys raided or is that something they would destroy?"

"Your obelisk…that would be something for you to be interested in." He touched the underside of his jaw, thinking with his eyes open before blinking and finding her face to fixate on. "It wouldn't have been destroyed so easily, and even if they were fragile, Kabuto is the type to worry about losing something so precious. I can almost promise it is not destroyed."

"Then would Kabuto still have it?" She hoped the answer was no. She didn't want to meet him again or ever have to see his face for as long as she lived.

"Likely, but we're not sure. The good news for you is that Oto has bigger fish to fry right now, so to speak. They're in trouble with another dome and that city is actively sending forces out in an effort to retrieve one of their people and eliminate the organization. It's serious enough that Oto has had to retreat from several outposts and abandon minor projects." Pein's head turned to the side and the rest of his sentences were softer in tone, as if to himself. "Engaging with us is out of the question. I bet now they regret scorning our alliance."

Sakura swallowed. "And I was a…minor project?"

He looked up, his attention returning to her. "Your retrieval was. Kabuto acted on his own the last time you saw him, and has likely been disciplined for his work. You won't have another encounter for years unless you seek him out, and by then you would not be worth retrieving." The metal under his lower lip caught a fractal of light, gleaming as a secretive smile moved across his face and settled in his eyes. "You'd be too strong to contain alive and that's how they would need you."

"I don't know about that, but if I never have to see him again it would be too soon." She wanted to look away from the metal on his face, but something about it made her want to stare more. Pein didn't seem to mind. "Still, where does that leave me in my search for my memories?"

"Are they so important?"

Sakura felt empty in a moment, caught in time and barely in her body. Her memories were everything about her life up until her escape from the labs. Without her memories she was drifting, living from one day to the next with no grand aim. She felt the absence of her memories every day like a new wound. Did she have family or friends she had left behind? Were there people looking for her the way others sought out their companions like the group Pein just mentioned? Did people miss her?

"Have you ever been without your memories?" Sakura asked, deflecting.

"No, and that is why I ask the question. I do not mean to sound condescending. My apologies if that is how I came off."

He reached inside his coat for a pocket to grab a shallow metal flask. It was the kind that clicked open via a latch at the top, making it easy to operate with one hand. Inside was a collection of rolled cigarettes, each marked with a simple colored brand that predicted the color of their smoke. A few were missing, like the red roll that should have been beside the orange. "It's all for show, there's never any tobacco to burn these days. Those are the things I remember, the things I've lost or have no longer. The rain, the smoke, the city before it was New Destruction."

Sakura watched with muted transfixion as he turned a cigarette with a purple band between two fingers, removing it and closing the rest of the case to be replaced inside his coat pocket. A silver lighter was in his other hand, and the demon on the shell casing had too many eyes to count. No, it wasn't a demon, it was one of the old angels, the kind that terrified worshipers before organized religion decided to bury that narrative and paint naked babies on ceilings. Sakura remembered that. She remembered the artwork of old angels with too many eyes, anointed with fire and many wings. Why did she know something so trivial when the city didn't even have churches?

"One more avenue you could consider, if you were willing, is to ask Sasori. You don't have to trust him, or feel comfortable around him, but he would be willing to tell you whatever he could if it was you who asked." He lit up and inhaled, the end of his cigarette catching fire in a subdued red halo. When Pein exhaled he breathed a cloud of lilac. "Sasori would talk to you. He's been…difficult with everyone else lately, which is new. Sasori is usually the stoic one." Another breath and the clouds took on a darker shade.

Speaking with Sasori was not something Sakura felt like doing. She couldn't move past the idea that he was the one behind her enhancement funding even if Kabuto had been the one who performed the actual procedures. He had picked her out like a thing on the wall at a store and put her in his basket for checkout. Was that normal?

"Maybe when I'm feeling better," Sakura answered, feeling caught between two storms. How much did she want her memories and how much did she hate the idea of being with Sasori. "Speaking of which, I need to find someone with some food."

Pein chuckled, violet clouds curling around his hand before another wind ripped it away. "Konan will see to it that you are well fed. I was pleased to see you so well recovered, Sakura."

Sakura waved a hand over her head, feeling the wing corresponding lift as well when she waved. "Till next time," she called back, heading towards the door again and seeking out further nourishment.

* * *

She woke up later that night when she heard someone in her room. Turning on the light she saw Konan cleaning up the tray from earlier.

"I'm sorry, did I wake you?"

Sakura blinked and then shook her head, remembering where she was. "Oh, no, no you didn't. I'm sorry, I didn't see you there. Thank you. You were the one that brought me here and was there when…when it happened." Behind her sakura stretched a single wing. In the dull light the feathers stained pink from her blood looked red again. "You were amazing. Thank you."

"It wasn't anything worth thanking me over." Kona set the tray back down and moved away from it to approach the bed where Sakura nested. She touched the end of the comforter before sitting down sideways. "How are you feeling?"

"Better. I was able to go on a walk today, but then I felt tired again and had to go back to sleep."

"You'll be like that. Your body is exhausted from trying to make sense of all the new things happening to it. We weren't meant for wings."

"How did you know what it would be like?" Sakura asked, looking over her shoulder at the one wing that she kept unfolded. The feathers were tight against one another, but she could feel the ends of them like fingers growing out of her back. She could spread them making her wings seem fuller and fatter, or pull them back for a sleaker look.

Konan watched Sakura experiment with her wing before smiling secretly and tugging at the corner of her cloak. "Can you keep a secret, Sakura?"

The younger girl's eyes went wide. Nodding, she forgot how to answer.

Konan pulled her cloak off and underneath she wore a simple indigo crop top that was more open in the front than in the back, exposing her pierced navel. She tugged on the front of her top and opened it up as well. Underneath her shirt she wore a simple gray sports bra and something like a harness the wrapped around her back. She unbuckled the harness and a single white wing stretched free.

Sakura gasped. "But I thought you lost your wings!"

"I did, but they almost grew back. I went through the same thing as you but without the guidance. My body was weak and not properly cared for at the time and I the right wing died, withered up like a tree branch and died away."

Sakura went very still and her wings stopped moving. Konan saw this and laughed. "It won't happen to you. If it was a possibility it would have happened by now."

"Why do you keep it hidden? It's so pretty, even if it's just one. Oh, it's so white it almost glows. Like an angel's wings."

Konan's expression was soft. "Nageto said the same thing. It started out as something I was ashamed of and embarrassed of. But Nageto…he loved me so much and he loved this part of me and I felt treasured by him. I told him it belonged to him. It was his wing and he's the only one I let know about it aside from the Harpies. They know as well."

"So you keep it hidden because it's precious to you?" Sakura watched as Konan gathered up the harness and folded her single wing back into the device meant to keep it flat and hidden. No wonder she wore s many high collar things.

"It is to me." She replaced her shirt and zipped it up, over her hidden wing. "The other girls don't see it that way, but that's fine. To each their own. This is how I chose to bear it." She smiled down at the younger girl. "Goodnight Sakura."

Sakura nodded. "Goodnight Konan, thank you."

* * *

By the time she was well enough to go back to work Sakura was more stir crazy than anything else. She came back to the club two days early and everyone wanted to see her wings. The girls at the bars were dizzy with delight, cooing and giggling at the authentic feathers that 'matched her hair perfectly.'

Even Zabuza seemed interested to see her wings, patting her head and telling her 'good job, kid,' before moving on to take care of the rest of his shift. When Haku came to pick him up even his adopted son wanted to see what Sakura hid under her riding coat. He said it was rare to see external enhancements like hers, and he had never seen one with aspect of bird before. Kisame had skin coloring and gills to boast about, but even Sakura had to admit her wings made her feel pretty.

Hanabi and Tenten were both delighted when they showed up after hearing about her absence. Hanabi stretched out hers playfully and joked about needing more time to grow them to be as full as Sakura's. Hanabi's would never be so large, her bird had thin bones and while they would grow some, it wouldn't be enough for flight.

In regards to her own ability to fly, Sakura tried once to see if she could cross a room with her wings, but the strain was too much and she was too heavy. Her wings would need to grow some more before she tried again.

Sakura fell back into her work, spending one day like the last and every like the next until the days didn't seem any different from one another.

Clocking out, sakura scanned her arm at the kiosk to vote for the weather and check her mail The Peridot girl welcomed her in a chip-tune voice before the options came up on the screen. Sakura found the bubble that read RAIN and then opened her mailbox. There was something new with no return address. Sakura had never seen something like that before.

Not knowing how it could hurt, Sakura opened the letter and scanned the contents.

A clue to your Obelisk. Meet me at X between the hours of X and X for information.

Each part of the letter where there was an X there was a link, meaning Sakura had to open it up in parts. The whole of the letter was in pieces. Whoever sent her the letter must have known her hours, because it was asking to meet just after her shift ended. Sakura looked at the clock in the corner of the screen and then brought up a map. They wanted to meet at a location that was twenty five minutes by bike from her current location, and that was only because Sakura raced like the devil. If she left now she would be able to make it easy. But wasn't it suspicious? It looked like a trap.

She fingered the chips in her breast pocket and pulled out out. If she could get someone to go with her, it was worth the risk. If not, she would just have to grin and bear it.

Making the call he picked up right away and it didn't take long for her to explain herself before she got an affirmation. He would meet her out a little ways from the meeting sight and continue with her from that point forward.

Moving quick, Sakura grabbed her helmet off the chair stacked up beside the old kiosk and skip walked down the stairs to the alleyway where her bike was parked. She was good with getting places fast, and the drive over there wasn't anything that concerned her. It was what happened after she arrived that had her nervous.

The meeting location was on the other side of the dome, not far from where she had originally woken up beside a pile of garbage. When she reached the shop with the neon orange tiger in its window her engine was a low purr as she scanned the surround area for the hog her friend rode.

Kisame was parked across the street, spotting her first and waving her down. Sakura walked her bike over to meet him and began to spill out a mess of garbled thanks. She didn't sound like she was making much sense even in her own mind.

"Hey!" Kisame's hands were on her shoulder and she looked up. He was grinning. "Slow down, it's going to be okay. I'm happy to help." Seeing her expression he even laughed. "You look like a bird that fell out of a birdbath, all fluffed up and agitated. Take it down a notch."

Sakura bit her bottom lip and shook her head, stepping back and coming her fingers through her hair to keep it out of her eyes. It was still stiff from the last time she tried styling it, and complied easily enough. "I'm not overreacting if you that's what you think. I'm fine now."

"Still look like one of those grumpy birds," Kisame laughed. When he saw the look Sakura sent him he shut up. "Okay, I got it. Funny business is over. What's the plan?"

"I thought it best to be direct. I mean it was such a short letter, he or she never said I couldn't bring anyone with me so I think you should just walk in with me."

"We're not that far away. Are you sure? We could scout around a bit."

"I'm kind of anxious, could you tell?"

Kisame ruffled her hair and she barked a sound of protest, unhappy with having the hair she just fixed messed up so suddenly. She whined his name but he just turned away and replaced the heavily detailed helmet he had been keeping on the seat of his hog. Sakura reached for helmet too and followed him on her bike.

Kisame rode confidently, already knowing the place where Sakura said they had to meet the mysterious contact. It was an old pharmacy outlet that shut down a long time ago, from before the rise of NewDestruction. It was easy to see that since the original sign still hung across the front with the Peridot fairy in the corner winking to customers. It was dark and dusty on the outside, but someone had obviously been to the site in the last few weeks because the boards across the door were ripped off and lay close by.

Kisame didn't even say anything to her, he just removed his helmet and dismounted before heading through the opening without even checking for traps. Was it possible for Kisame to do anything without an overflowing amount of confidence? Sakura doubted it. She scurried to park her bike and follow him down. It was dark inside, but there was a clear trail leading down back behind the counter and to a door left open. Sakura looked around Kisame and saw stairs, but nothing was lit.

"Can you see?" she asked, straining in the dark. She could see better than average, but her eyes weren't stellar in the dark. She was a bird, not a bat.

Kisame's eyes were like black beads as the scanned the stairwell. "Yeah, I'm great in the dark. Stick close to me, kid." He grabbed her hand and held onto it, walking down first. Sakura stayed close, but not close enough that she would obstruct him in a fight. In spite of his bulk, Kisame was oddly silent on the stairs, making little to no sound. He was stealth personified and that made her feel better about the whole ordeal.

The stairs led to a basement littered with debris and garbage from long ago. There was dust and footprints. Up ahead light flickered and Kisame tensed, dragging Sakura behind him. Sakura went taunt, watching as the light approached. Kisame drew a knife.

"You?" a voice called out through the darkness. "What are you doing here?"

"I should ask you that question," Kisame growled. "You sent the email."

Sakura peaked out from behind Kisame's arm and saw the red hair of the other Akatsuki member. She had recognized his voice, but had to see it to be sure. Sasori must have spotted her from behind Kisame's arm because he stiffened and then forced his body to relax. "You came."

Sakura swallowed and forced her voice to stay even. "Obviously. Why did you send such a cryptic note. You didn't even sign it. I thought it could be a trap by Kabuto or something."

"If you knew it was me, would you have come?"

She thought back to Pein's parting words. She didn't want to admit it, but Sasori was one of the few individuals with significant information on her ordeal. He could be helpful. "Maybe." She stepped out from behind Kisame and crossed her arms over her chest. "So why did you want to meet me here?"

He seemed distracted with something behind her and angled his hand light to her shoulders and she tensed, pulling her wings back. He ducked his head, but didn't lower his eyes. "I heard your wings finally came in. Congratulations, they're lovely."

She wanted to bit his skin and snarl something like, 'did you pick them out,' but she wrestled the violent delights down. She had control over her actions. She would not be anger for him. "Why are we here, Sasori?"

The redhead turned and looked over his shoulder, where he had come from. "This is the entrance to the lab where you were experimented on. Sadly, I do not have your obelisk but this place might hold clues for you. Will you come?"

Sakura tensed, feeling the pull of flashback bubbling. If she went with him what she saw would trigger things, like when she saw Kabuto after so long. To know that the place where so much of her life ended and began was so close made her shiver.

She fisted her hands at her sides and nodded, closing her eyes and taking the first step forward. Sasori should have know his question was a metaphorical one. There was no way she wouldn't follow him now. She had come so far, fear wouldn't hold her back.

She heard Kisame fall into step behind her, and together the trio followed the path cut through the dust to where Sasori had come from. It led to another door with clean bolts and heavy levers holding it in place. Sasori had already opened it and all he had to do was pull it back for the three of them to be granted access. He took the lead and Sakura fell into place behind him while Kisame took up the rear. The hallway was long and slanted downwards at time. Sakura tried to keep track in her head of the minutes but gave up after seven.

"Almost there," Sasori whispered into the gloom, glancing back over his shoulder at Sakura.

The look in his eyes was one that showed how much he wanted to say more but wouldn't. Sakura knew what Sasori wanted, but she wasn't here to forgive him and make nice. She had a history to reclaim and her messed up feeling regarding her backstory with him wasn't worth the distraction

"How did you know about this place?" Kisame asked, trying to stay light in tone, but obviously a bit passive aggressive considering his loyalty to Sakura.

Sasori's voice was tight. "I was involved in selecting enhancements that would yield the greatest benefit with the lowest risk. I was here before, with Kabuto."

Sakura sneezed. "Please tell me there is going to be less dust where we are heading. This is a bit much."

"The facility, while no longer maintained, is not as bad." He paused before adding a question. "Does the dust inhibit your motor functions."

"Do they-wha? What kind of lame ass question is that?" Sakura laughed. She hadn't meant to, but at the very end she sneezed again and it sounded like a higher pitch than the others. Kisame chuckled and Sakura hissed a quiet, 'shut up' in response to his reaction.

Sasori pulled something out of his pocket and handed it back to Sakura. It was a cloth handkerchief with a cute floral border. "Here," he mumbled, only glancing to see if she would pick it up.

She took it, noticing that the flowers were pink cherry blossoms. Her stomach pinched, but she nodded in his direction, mumbling a quiet 'thanks' under his breath. He heard her though because he nodded in reply and turned his eyes forward again. The tips of his ears were flushed.

The hallway leveled out and Sakura saw ahead of them an opening. A minute later they were in a small room with two doors, both locked with key codes. It was impossible to tell which one led to the area they needed, both seemed equally well maintained.

"Which one?" Kisame asked, looking them both over. "You got a code or something."

Wordlessly, Sasori approached the one to the left and regarded the keypad for a moment before raising his hand. Sakura jumped at the sound when his fist came down and ripped the keypad from the wall. Sasori reached inside the hole he had just made and grabbed a handful of wires, pulling on them. The electronics made a sad sound and Sasori dropped the wires. He turned towards the door and tried the handle.

"Oh, it's open." He looked back at the pair was a blank face. "Shall we go in?"

"I'm a bit freaked out by his lack of expression," Sakura muttered to Kisame, but followed the redhead in.

"That's why they call him the puppet. That's how he always is.'"

Lights came on all around them and Sakura swallowed the shock, fisting her hands at her sides again. The room was a mess, but it wasn't dusty. The mess wasn't old. There were holes in the walls and half destroyed wall panels and light fixtures hanging out with sad, limp wires exposed. Sakura took a step and heard a crunch. There were a few folders left open with loose papers partially scattered across the floor.

"One of the labs," Kisame whistled. "Looks like they blew themselves up on the way out.

"I was a part of the original recovery team, and there wasn't much we could find the first time around, but maybe there is something here that means more to you than it would to us," Sasori spoke, looking to Sakura.

Kisame noticed the stillness in Sakura and reached out to bop her shoulder. "Sakura?"

"…I remember this place…or part of it. This was an office, and I don't think I was ever in here." She looked to a wall and pushed on the panel. It flickered and through the glass she saw a testing room. That was a room she remembered better, one she had spent actual time inside of. She remembered the straps and needles. She pointed. "I was there."

He pat her head, looking from her window to Sasori. "It's okay, kid. Let's look and see what we can find."

Sasori kept his head down, but he stole glances at her every chance he could, regardless of whether or not he thought she was looking. Sakura couldn't find it in herself to care about what he did or who he looked at. The images were foggy in her brain and she wanted them to either clear up or leave.

Oh

Her wings.

Before they filed her wings down, she had wings wide and strong. They were such strong wings, stretching far from her body like giant arms. She remembered the feel of them.

Sakura fell to her knees, a dead look in her eyes as her smaller wings stretched themselves out, trying to grow. It would be weeks before they were large enough to need pinning back, but how much longer before they were what they used to be. How long until she could fly again? She felt crippled by the memory and the loss. Oh, sure she had terrible memories from this place, but they took her to a hanger and she flew for them. She remembered the wind and the seconds that felt like days. She remembered when they let her fly and it filled her heart with longing. She wanted her wings to grow faster, to fill out sooner. She wanted to fly again.

"Sakura?"

She looked up and saw Sasori in front of her. He had crouched down to be on her level. Kisame was at the other end of the room, digging through computer junk. Sasori's expression was on e of concern. "Are you…unwell?"

She remembered hating him and fearing him, but she was still riding the dream of having wings. She couldn't find it in herself to remember Sasori with bitterness anymore. "Why did you choose wings?"

He blinked. "For you?"

Sakura nodded.

"It was the one thing Deidara wished he had above all else. He had the DNA of a bird but could not fly."

"What purpose did it serve to give me wings? You said you were involved in selecting enhancements that would 'yield the greatest benefit with the lowest risk,' but I can't see how wings would be a huge benefit. They're rare because…they're not a huge benefit."

"But they would make you happy." He said it so matter of fact she couldn't believe he even knew how to lie.

"Why should that matter to you?"

Sasori didn't look away from her, but the skin around his eyes strained and she knew he wanted to. It was a moment longer before he said anything in reply. "I just wanted to make someone in my life happy for a change. You can hate me, and maybe you will forever, but I wanted you to be happy and I wanted…you in my life. I had no nefarious intentions, not like Kabuto. Please believe that at least."

Sakura didn't know what to say. She leaned away, climbing off her hands and sitting back on the heels of her shoes. It had been easier to just hate sasori, but now things were complicated. He might have been waiting for a reply, but a sound from Kisame drew her attention away.

"Over here, Sakura. I need your arm, there's a working scanner here."

Sakura got up and climbed over the junk to sit down next to her larger friend. Kisame made a grabby hand motion for her wrist and she held out her arm, baring the flesh he needed to scan by pushing back her jacket sleeves. Sasori was behind her, growling in annoyance. "You don't know what that is, watch what you're doing!"

The machine blinked, thinking for a moment before it beeped and the red light flashed green. A screen nearby with a long crack running through the bottom half flickered on, sluggish and grainy. Somewhere else in the room another light went off, beeping. Sakura stood up and looked at the screen, recognizing her name at the top. More jargon followed soon after and Sasori huffed in annoyance. His eyes recognized the text. "Medical records. Your ID code unlocked their coded files. I looked like everything had been erased, but we were wrong."

"Is there anything on where I'm from, or where they found me and picked me up. What kind of information is there on my history?" Sakura asked, searching the scrolling text for something she could understand.

"That wouldn't be here, at least not in this file. Kabuto should have a character profile for you in addition to these medical records." Sasori extended his hand and the finger joins came apart, allowing fiber optic thin cables to levitate in mid air before shooting into the computer, searching for the hidden files. "I will try to recover as much as I can. There might be something left."

"But it's nothing worth pulling up," a computerized voice laughed from behind and above them. The screen flickered and Sasori cursed, reaching for Sakura to move behind him as the scrolling text flickered out to a black screen and then to a video feed.

Kabuto sat in his office at a desk not unlike the one Sakura remembered him using when she was brought before his for mental evaluations. In the projection Kabuto was sitting with his fingers laced over his knee and his shit eating grin stretched wide. Kisame cursed behind her.

"How did you know we would be here?" Kisame roared. Sasori stayed silent, eyes narrowed and angry.

"I have all my previous work sites rigged so that a past experiment scanning in triggers my notice. I don't normally get such calls, but I was sure to make an exception for Sakura. How are you, pet?"

Sasori threw something Sakura couldn't see-a discarded file drawer- at the monitor and another crack ran through the glass. Kabuto's lip curled, but he didn't stop smiling.

"Temper, temper, old pal. I'm sorry, but my business is with Sakura. I'm sure she wants to hear what I have to say." He looked to her. "You did come all this way didn't you?"

"I really don't want to hear anything from you," Sakura hissed, hackles rising. The wings on her back bunched and rose, angry with the rest of her.

Kabuto's damned smile wouldn't go away. He reached back and pulled something off his desk to balance on his knee. Sakura stiffened and beside her she heard Kisame curse loudly. Sasori's expression was murder. "Are you looking for this?" Kabuto asked, turning her Obelisk on his knee. "I made sure to take good care of it."

"Kabuto!" She wanted to tear him to pieces. She wanted to rip him open and scatter the scraps.

"You should thank me, I kept it safe and sound when others would have let it go bad. Why…I'm so generous, I'm even going to offer it back to you. Isn't that nice of me?"

"Cut the shit, Kabuto," Sakura bit out. She knew he wasn't a good man. His words were as honest as his deeds. She couldn't trust him.

"I assure you, Sakura, my offer is genuine. You want your memories back, win them. I'm partial organizer to a race nearly two weeks from now. Your Obelisk will be the prize. Sound like fun?"

She understood Sasori's reaction as the need to throw something at him grew. She wanted to dent his face in. Thinking was a mess. She was rage and need and want in the body of a girl. Her voice was a growl. "It's mine, give me back my memories. Those are mine!"

The screen went blank, but she could still hear his voice. "I'll be racing too, so don't think it's too easy for you. The details will be out shortly, but I doubt you could miss them if you tried. There is no race greater than the one across the Green Line." He chuckled, and it made her skin crawl. "Your memories will be waiting, precious."

Sakura roared and a chair hurdled into the screen, shattering it.

* * *

"A race?" Shisui asked, rubbing a cloth over his damp hair. He had just hopped out of the shower where the call cam in flashing from his mobile. He put it on speaker to keep his hands free and was a bit caught off guard to hear Sasori's voice. "Yeah, there's a big one coming up, but the race track is revealed a week before, and that's not for…four…maybe three more days. Why do you ask?"

"You will be participating, will you not?" Sasori asked through the mobile, voice as stoic as ever. The two didn't normally get along, which made the call that much more baffling.

"Yeah, racing is my thing, you know that though. Why are you interested?"

He pulled out a few boxes of food and grumbled about the lack of selection. He had very little in terms of actual food and most of the stuff he kept on hand was the artificial junk that just needed water and tasted like cardboard. But that's what happens when you can't cook. If he was desperate he would eat the cardboard stuff, but at the moment, he wasn't starving, so he decided to order take out through his computer while keeping his phone on for Sasori.

"Kabuto will be entering the race, as will Sakura."

Shisui dropped whatever had been in his hand and made a mess around his feet. His damp hair had been forgotten and for a moment he was reeling, but only for a moment. "What? What did you just say? Say that again!"

Sasori proceed with a brief recount of their adventures the night before and added that Sakura had found the race and registered her bike. She was having it inspected that afternoon before work and Kisame was going with her. Sasori promised to get what intel he could to share when she got back. When he spoke about Kabuto holding Sakura's memories as leverage, Shisui remembered the mission to Tanzanite and the first time Sakura saw an Obelisk.

If he could give her back her stolen Obelisk, how would she see him? He remembered the dream, he remembered the sound of her voice and the way she said his name, the sound of her breath, sharp and soft and everything in between. But more than the sound of her voice he remembered the blackness that came when he dreamed of kissing her, how his dream always felt empty after that scene. He wanted to know what she tasted like, he wanted to kiss her and breath her in and inhale her soul.

"Shisui?" The sound of Sasori calling out to him broke his mind free and he remembered himself.

"Yeah?" He took a step and corn flakes crunched under his bare toes. He cursed. "I'm on speaker," he grumbled, as if that would explain anything.

Sasori hummed, seemingly unconcerned. Shisui knew the redhead didn't care. "Do you have information on the location of the race?"

"I told you that information is confidential. It's in another dome city so Akatsuki can't scare their way to it."

"I'm not asking Akatsuki, I'm asking you."

Shisui grumbled, but then remembered Sakura. "Nothing is confirmed, but there are rumors that they are planning to host it inside of Obsidian."

There was silence through the speaker until Sasori voice cut through on a sharp note. "Is that wise?"

"No, that's why they're doing it there." Shisui kicked away a pile of flakes, not bothering to pick anything up. He'd get it later-after take out. "This is a huge race, like a major event that people plan their year around. I've been prepping for the past month, you know. It's never been safe, that's the point."

"How is access to such a dome even possible? It's uninhabitable."

He rolled his eyes. "Well we're not going to set up house and live there, it's just a race. Minimal exposure is something you can recover from." A thought gave him pause. "And Sakura is in a better position than most. She can regenerate corrupt cells. It won't make that much of a difference after the fact."

"Cell regeneration is not so simple, nor is it painless."

"Is this something you can really persuade her out of doing?" It wasn't even a question. They both knew the answer. Sakura wouldn't be Sakura if she could be so easily dissuaded from pursuing the important things in life. He didn't know much about her, but he knew that much. Her character was stainless.

"What other information do you have?"

Shisui frowned. "That's pretty much it so far. What else do you want to know, it's not…what are you looking for?"

"I'd like to know who else will be racing. Can you procure a list of all the participants. Registration is closed, it should be finalized. Anything you have on the other participates as well."

He groaned, knowing that was something he wouldn't be able to get. He wasn't a hacker like his cousin. He knew a few guys who were racing, only because they bragged about getting a slot and he knew who had raced in the past. That he could get but… "I would have to ask Itachi or Konan for that. I have no idea of else is racing aside from a few regulars."

"Get for me what you can. I'll pay you for your hours."

Shisui made a face, scrunching up his nose in confusion. "Is this a Akatsuki job?"

"No, this is a personal request." His words were clipped and brief, then the line went dead.

* * *

Sakura raced all the time, but Sakura had never raced against anyone in competition before. It was one thing to set a clock and time yourself around a track, but racing was different when there were bodies on the track and staying out of the way of the meaner competitors was half the battle.

"They'll run you right off the road if they think they can, it's not against the rules," Kisame told her. "Don't let them."

He was helpful in finding old files for her of races in the past. None of them were of the actual Green Line race, which was apparently a huge deal and super secretive, but a lot of racers from the lesser Red, Yellow, and Blue races would be in the Green Line race.

A week passed too quickly.

She met with some of the Harpies, Temari and Hana being the most experienced on bikes. Hana qualified in the Red Line race last year, and this year both she and Temari were racing. Hearing that Sakura had a spot surprised them, but when Sakura explained they were violently supportive.

It made Sakura feel guilty and happy all at once to know that her friends, two girls who were supposed to be her enemies because of science and hormones gone crazy, were her greatest allies in the end. Hana especially, who Sakura had never been close with, said without words that she would race for Sakura after hearing what was on the line.

The pair took Sakura to a track and tutored her on the finer points of race technique and how to handle situations with another driver on the road. The Line races were unique in that the racers were allowed to attack others, and carrying weapons wasn't something that was out of the question. It was part of the appeal. Hana carried a metal rod with a long reach and Temari brandished a collection of short knives. Their training was invaluable.

There was a day when it looked like the harmony between the three girls would falter after Hana flared up and snarled at Sakura, but Temari pulled her friend back and the two exchanged a set of blows before backing away and settling down. Panting heavily, Hana looked up through her bangs at Sakura. Her eyes were hard and her jaw still.

"Don't let them win. They can't be forgiven for this."

Sakura didn't say anything, but she nodded and it was enough for Hana. She stood, grabbing her helmet from the ground where she had left it and stomped off towards her bike, parked up against a shaded wall.

Temari waited until the roar flared in their ears and the taillights of Hana's bike streaked out through the twilight before turning to Sakura. "Don't let it rattle you. We're better when we're on our bikes. Never had a fight there."

"It's not fair, what you have to live with."

"No, it's not."

The girls didn't speak for the rest of the evening and once the sun went down behind the artificial clouds Sakura made for her club to work the rest of the night.

Sometimes it would be different, with Kisame coming to check up on her with information or video feed, or something in her mail she spent hours with in a room upstairs, but it was mostly the same old routine, day after day, anxiety building.

Sasori came to see her one night, after work. She had never told him where she spent her nights, but if he wanted to, she didn't doubt he could find out anything he needed to know with a little effort. He was smart. She suspected he had know about her job from before he sent her that link to explore Kabuto's old lab, but he had never showed up at her work before. Maybe it was out of respect, because he knew she wouldn't like it.

She seemed off whenever someone from the Akatsuki showed up. Itachi had made appearances infrequently, but Sakura was extra careful about giving him extra room so that they never crossed paths again. He must have noticed. He hadn't tried to see in her in the last week. She hadn't noticed until just now, too preoccupied was her mind with this race. She swallowed, remembering the last encounter and shook the thought away.

"Sasori," she returned to the moment, approaching him outside the back exit. "What are you doing here?"

He watched her, eyes half lidded and shadowed, but still intense. They hadn't spoken since the night in Kabuto's lab. Sasori reached inside the oversized black coat that ended in cuffs around his wrists, spiked and studded. In his hand was something that looked like a canister, but it was small. He extended his hand, meaning for her to take it.

"What is it?" Sakura asked, taking a hesitant step closer.

"It's all I have. There is…information in there too about the location of the race. Shisui is familiar with the Obsidian Dome, some of this comes through him." There was an unspoken and hiding in his words. Sakura eyed him wearily and he took the hint. "Also, there is the original data I received after Kabuto began his experiments. There is likely nothing useful to you in them, they don't tell you where you came from, but it felt wrong to keep it from you."

Sakura took the canister and ran a thumb over the side, finding a latch. Inside was another chip, this one with a barcode on one side and a red number 89969 on the back. That looked like the number she sometimes saw next to her name in files about her experiments. She fingered the chip and then looked back up at him. Sasori was watching her, but his face was turned away.

"Why are you giving this to me now?"

"You deserve it."

"But why now?"

He watched her, the silence growing between her words and his unspoken thoughts. "It's when I became able to hand it over. Until now…something held me back." He wouldn't elaborate on what that 'something' was, if it was shame or fear or something else, but Sakura felt his words ring like truth. What he said made sense.

"Thank you," she said with a subtle bob of her head. The feel of the metal under her fingers was cold, like metal usually was, but in the cool of the night it was sharper than all the air around her. She was extra aware of it's presence in her hand. Maybe that was because of what it meant. She wouldn't get much practical use out of her files, but there was something like a surrender in Sasori handing it over to her. That thought made her fingertips twitch.

He nodded back, eyes looking down. When he raised his face again his eyes were still downcast. "I will be heading back first. It was nice to see you again." He turned to leave.

"Sasori." He paused but didn't turn around. "I won't apologize for how I've treated you till now, because I think it's justified, I think it was within my rights to feel how I felt, and even now it would be okay I think." She swallowed, rolling the words around before breathing them out. "But I want to move past that now and it's not for you, it's for me. I forgive you for what you did to me. It was wrong and if you ever try that again I'll punch your face in, but I'm past it, starting now."

He didn't turn or move or twitch. Sakura wasn't sure he even breathed as he kept his back to her. But after what felt like forever she saw his shoulders sag and his head drop. He shifted his stance enough that he could glance back over his shoulder. "Then…."

Sakura held out a hand, palm upright as if to stop him. "Wait until after the race. Whatever happens, we can talk it out then. I don't know where that will leave us, but at least now I can say we're friendly acquaintances. Maybe friends in the future."

"The race is in two days." She didn't know if he was talking to her or himself.

She blinked. "Eh, I thought it was three days."

His expression was calm and even when he looked up. "It is technically morning. Two days."

"Ugh, don't be a smart ass. I'm going to go home and sleep, but then I have training with the girls. I'll see you in two days."

Sasori smiled, and it wasn't the plastic sort of smile meant for formal business deals and forced encounters with strangers you have to fake liking. His smile reminded her of a child's and she almost choked at how it made her feel. "Until the race. I will see you then."

* * *

Pein was smoking again. It was rare these days to find him outside without something on fire and trailing smoke. Some days it wouldn't even be something he could inhale. He just wanted the smoke drifting and curling the way he remembered them as a child. His heart hurt a little less when something burned for him. The burned down stub of a green cigarette lay crushed beside the toe of his boot.

"You're not going to come down?" Konan asked from behind him. "Nageto and I were going to watch the race. Deidara is streaming feed through his optic lens."

"There isn't any reason to watch something like that." The smoke was red again, but sometimes it curled up and out as something lighter, a faint rose or heady blush. He never saw it as pink, but sometimes it came close.

"That's a cold thing to say when our Sakura dear is racing."

"Your other Harpy sisters are in the race as well."

Konan almost huffed. "Well yes, I'm watching for all of them, but you don't care about either Hana or Temari."

"And you think I care about the little pink haired girl?" He glanced back over his shoulder and frowned when he saw the stone smooth expression of his sister in law. Her face was like alabaster.

"You know her name. You can say it without jinxing yourself."

"It's easier when you're away from her, you know." He rolled the stick between his fingers before touching the end to his lips and inhaling. Breathing out he could have been venting fire it was so bright when the red smoke hissed out through thinly pressed lips.

He looked up at the dull sky. It was another cloudy day but it wouldn't rain. Did they know what rain meant to him? "It's not as evident when separated- the pull that has Itachi and the others in so much of a tizzy. I thought I might be caught, but I know better now."

"Is that why you're up here killing yourself with packs of mint and crimson colored cancer sticks?" Konan hummed coyly. When Pein looked back at her one of her eyebrows was artfully raised and the look she sent him was not something he could mistakenly interpret as anything else but teasing.

"You are stretching a misconception." The words came slow, each one individually emphasized. He wasn't about to say more than he needed to. Konan had a way of pulling epics out of sentences and finding meaning in the tiny details often overlooked.

"If that's what you think, who am I to believe otherwise?" Her voice was a laugh.

"Leave if all you are here to do is tease me."

"I came up here to extend a simple invitation. Do not think I am without kindness, dear brother."

He took another drag and this time his breath was a dragon, slithering away on scarlet scales till the wind made it into something else. "I have no interest in observing the spectacle. I thought I made that clear when I came up here."

"No, you made that clear when you refused to leave with Sasori and the others." He heard her footsteps meet the edge of the metal where the roof became stairs. "But I thought it would be nice if you allowed yourself to be honest for once instead of pretending to be the god you cringingly insist you are."

Her footsteps echoed, fading out.

Pein looked down at the hand that held his stick of cancer. It fumed so much, but it never smoked the right shade of red for him. Closing his eyes he took another long drag, burning it down, and let the breath out. It drifted far enough to pass through the oversized chain links of the fence he sat facing. Phasing through, his smoke divided into two tendrils to pass through the openings. A lazy wind picked them up and for a moment he saw wings. Red wings.

He closed his eyes and took another drag and blew.

* * *

Sakura watched as another building crumbled. There were so many of them set up too closely that when the dome shook years ago many of them shifted just enough to hit the structure beside it and lean there for as long as it was still in one piece. She was high up enough that the city looked like a play set and not an actual city. She had seen destruction before, but this was more than some broking skyscrapers and debris, what she was seeing was desecration and abandonment. There used to be so much, now there was nothing.

"Behold, the abandoned city, OldDestruction. It was the first dome to rebel and the first to fall and the first to be fled wholly and completely." Temari adjusted something connected to her helmet and Sakura saw it was a hose that connected her helmet to a box on her chest with air. Behind her, Hana fitted on her own helmet complete with an extended nozzle that filtered air for her. Several other riders had similar designs on their helmets.

Temari grinned. "The air is toxic, so prolonged exposure can kill you in a week, maybe two if you're healthy or enhanced." She turned on the box and it began converting air. She grinned with her eyes. "You'll be fine for a day though. That's something your body can handle."

Sakura looked down at the helmet that was a dark black with red stripes down the sides and wings etched in white ink over the exhaust vents. There was built in filtration unit that cushioned the back of her crown and ran through her mask into vents beside her mouth inside. It had been a gift from Kisame.

Two weeks later and she was here. The Obsidian Dome. It felt like a rush had come over her and before she knew it she was close to risking and losing or risking and winning it all. Her memories were almost within reach. Her Obelisk was one of the trophies set out at the end of the course for the winner to grab.

Overhead there was a banner with lit up lights that counted down the minutes. It had been at thirteen when Sakura walked her bike out, and now it was at seven. She checked her things over again, counting the nitrate pills clicked into place along the band on her wrist. She wore racing gloves with the back of her hands exposed and a large, red, leather jacket with HARPIES written in thick white ink.

Her boots were tight and her engine wasn't too hot. It had a full tank, she was ready to go. Looking up she saw the time read 6:22. She groaned out loud. The last five minutes would feel like forever. Out of the twenty nine bikers who qualified, twenty three were on the race track in their designated starting slots. The other six were walking their bikes up, taking their good old sweet time and it made Sakura want to scream or run or do something. She hated waiting.

"Calm down," Hana huffed. She was eying one of the new arrivals who was glaring at her. She flipped him to bird and he cursed her out. They were far away enough that they could no longer see each other once he rolled his bike into place.

Up ahead, closer to the front where the more mature racers were, Sakura caught sight of the black leather with the Uchiha fan stitched across the back. Shisui was racing as well, and sometimes when she felt a presence she would look up and see him staring back at her through the open visor of his helmet.

'I won't go easy on you,' she mouthed.

He laughed and gave her a thumbs up. "Good!"

The clock read 3:58 and started to chirp.

The slot next to her had been empty, but at 3:45 the rider walked up, mounting and aligning herself with the markers on the ground. Sakura glanced over, feeling her gaze and felt ice in her gut.

3:25

All she could see were her eyes, but they were enough to trigger another memory. She had seen her eyes before, once long ago, back with Kabuto. There was so much white and she was white, dressed in white, pale with white skin, set against a white wall. She wasn't like the others under Kabuto.

2:51

A strand of shocking violet hair fell down between her eyes, pressed tight against her forehead by her visor and Sakura remembered the short clip that always held her hair up as she looked over what was left of Sakura at the end of a long day. She was someone who made Kabuto nervous. She was like him in respect to power and authority, but Sakura knew somehow that this woman was not like Kabuto at all. She was his equal, but also his fear.

1:25

"Sakura," the woman hissed, her eyes slit like those of a snake's.

1:05

Absently, Sakura felt the ice in her veins and knew she had to look away, had to lean in, had to see her body forward for the send off. She was stiff with the fear, even as Anko turned away, grinning wickedly. A few men around her looked over and then back to the starting line. The few that glanced at Sakura before looking to the starting line gave themselves away as Oto.

0:33

She should have expected this. It was a trap set by Kabuto, after all.

0:24

Her bones were open, thick and then light in the places they experimented with. She was going to fly, but she wasn't going to fly with such heavy bones. They cut her open to fix that. They liked to cut her open.

0:19

"Sakura!" Temari was calling to her, shouting over the roar of the crowds who sat behind glass boxes and in front of widescreen monitors, safe from the toxic air to enjoy the bloodshed. They started to count down from twelve, the seconds slower than usual.

0:10

It was Hana who knocked her back into the present. "Get your head on straight. Don't be a cold ass now."

0:05

Sakura leaned in, setting her head down so her neck was even with her spin, putting her in perfect form for intense wind resistance.

The world around her slowed as the last few numbers flashed as lights until there were none. The world was a monster and she was a part of it, ripping out alongside twenty nine other hopefuls.

* * *

Hidan returned to the room with another bowl of food, the kind that stained fingers and got everywhere in the form of crumbs.

He had been sitting closer to the screen, but during his break for snacks Konan had come down from the roof and taken his seat. Technically it was her seat, since she owned the building alongside Pein and Nageto, but it still wasn't a good enough reason to go around stealing seats previously claimed by movie watchers. He came early for a good spot too!

Sensing his presence in the doorway, the dark haired woman looked away from the screen, up at Hidan and blinked with all the calmness of a China Doll. Hidan felt his spine tingle and his skin crawl. He might be an immortal powerhouse that kills on the regular, but Konan was scary.

"Fucking seat snitcher," Hidan muttered under his breath, moving to take a new spot next to Itachi. Usually the Uchiha was good about leaving these things early, but for this race Itachi seemed unusually engaged with the projections on the screen. His cousin was racing, so it wasn't all that unbelievable to assume he was interested for the well being of his blood and kin.

Itachi's eyes being glued to the screen made sense. Sasori eyes being glued to the screen didn't. "What the hell is wrong with the puppet?" Hidan asked in a huff, reaching into the bowl for another red piece of his finger food. Sasori never showed up to these things if he could help it.

"Sakura's racing," Deidara supplied, sounding less nonchalant and more stressed than usual. Deidara loved this thing, but he didn't sound excited. It was enough to make Hidan frown.

"What's wrong with you. Someone stole your panties?"

The blond member frowned at the comment but didn't take the bait. Deidara reached over and grabbed a handful of red powered snacks and leaned back into his seat, eyes stuck on the screen.

"I hope someone dies right away. Half of 'em will be dead by the end...at least." Hidan's eyes danced and then he laughed again at the thought. He hummed something broken before munching on another piece. "Aw yeah, bloodshed tonight."

Kisame turned around from his spot on the floor and bared his teeth. "Shut it, crazy ass. I'm not going to put up with your sicko fantasies during this."

Now Kisame had snapped at him. Konan was here, Sasori was here and interested, Deidara sounded distracted, and even Kisame was snappy. Something was off with everyone. They didn't all get together to watch things often-only for missions-but that still didn't explain the behaviors of what he thought was a group of criminal mob bosses.

"What the hell is wrong with everyone?" Hidan asked slowly, looking around at each and every one with a weary shook his head like he was surrounded by idiots, probably thinking he was. "Shisui's going to be fine. He's a better fighter than any of the other racers so it doesn't make sense for all of you girls to piss yourself stiff."

Interestingly enough, it was Itachi who spoke. "Shisui is not the object of concern in this race."

Hidan scowled, fingers digging for more snack bits. "Care to explain, bright eyes?"

Itachi's tone was even and maintained, but there was a tired echo to it, like he was weary from...from something Hidan couldn't guess. But more than his words, Itachi's eyes were weary. "Haruno Sakura is racing as well. This is her first race. Kabuto has set up her Obelisk of memories as the trophy."

It took him a while, but finally the gears shifted and something clicked in his mind. He remembered her, the pink haired chick who he stabbed through the gut but got right back up to finish him in the fight. She had been fine, and maybe if he wasn't driven to kill by chemical compulsions, he might have felt something for her. She was smoking hot too.

Her Harpy friends were all hot as hell too, especially the blond, Temari. He had tried tapping that in the past and he could still feel the teeth marks if he closed his eyes and smiled. Ah yes those were the days. Konan kept them separated now, warning him against further harassment. He was tempted to risk it, just to feel her teeth again and maybe even for a slap across the face. Yeah.

But Sakura was the one racing for the first time. That made sense as to why Sasori was a tightly wound little toy for the tv, but what about the others. Sasori had a thing for her, but Deidara sounded distracted too.

"Isn't she supposed to help with the Druid tower renovation. You were gonna blow em up?" He munched on his treats, looking to the blond who scowled in displeasure.

Deidara's lip curled a bit at the corners. "The Druid syndicate paid up and Nageto won't assign me anything else we could contract her for. I'm on damn recon missions until the end of the month."

"And that's bad because….?"

Hidan had a guess, but he liked seeing Deidara get worked up and pissed off. Hidan liked seeing anyone pissed off, Deidara wasn't special, he was just easy to agitate as one of the youngest members to the group and one of the latest to join. In addition to all that, Deidara was a natural hot head.

"It's not," Kisame cut in, not looking up from his spot on the floor.

"Holy shit, you too?" Hidan wanted to laugh. Kisame was famous for being the one who pushed buttons. It was impossibly difficult to push his own buttons though, mostly because the big blue man would pound your face in or kill you before you could tease much more. "She got you both, hook, line, and sinker, don't she?"

"Do you need to be removed?" Itachi asked in a fake bored tone that came out sounding like a drawl, but Hidan knew better. Itachi was agitated too. Oh yeah, this was going to be fun.

"Nah, it's not like that. I'm not here to blame anyone, I get it, I get it. She's a fine piece of ass that can really work a pair of micro minis. If I had another shot I'd bend her over the first thing I see an-"

Hidan's head was in the cushions, face tilted up as Itachi wrapped his fist around the taller man's tongue and throat. Not hesitating for more than the two seconds it took Hidan to gain his bearings and understand what was going on, itachi jerked back violently and the blood from Hidan's ripped out tongue sprayed.

Konan made a noise of displeasure in the back of her throat at the mess, but no one else moved.

Hidan coughed, hacking blood. His tongue would grow back in a minute, but it would hurt and be difficult to work around until he got used to the new flesh. It wasn't a big deal that he lost his tongue right out of his mouth, but it was sort of a big deal that it had been Itachi to do it. Sasori had taken a saw to Hidan's face before, and Kisame had shoved something through the pale man's throat, but Itachi was too cool, too composed, too civilized for that sort of thing.

Oh yes, very fun indeed. Itachi had it back for the little pinky bruiser. He had heard rumors about the Uchiha moping since the past two weeks, and tony tidbits of not so random information started to make sense. Itachi had it bad for her, but there didn't seem to be much hope for him and her, or something like that.

Konan had lectured Itachi about it, and Hidan hadn't bothered caring about it at the time because he was too busy being thankful it wasn't him getting the blue witch's attention. Itachi had tried to force a bond or mating exercise on her and Konan went off about consent and manipulation and honor and some other shit. Hidan didn't get the bonding thing cause he wasn't enhanced with animal DNA. His mutation was different. He was still a monster like the rest of them, just a different breed.

Hidan chuckled through the blood and spit, returning to his seat only to stiffen when he felt wire under his chin. It didn't scare him, but he looked up to glare at Sasori whose hand had been opened up to expose the wiring of his artificial limb, complete with enhancements of the robotic variety. Sasori wasn't bonded with an animal either, and Hidan thought the ass to be asexual as hell, but apparently Sasori cared something for the girl he had picked out and ordered from Kabuto like a toy.

"There will be no more sounds from you," Sasori said evenly. Itachi glared over Hidan's shoulder at the redhead and Sasori noticed. Hidan watched as the two shot daggers at each other and wondered who was more pathetic.

"Don't forget your place," Sasori hissed, but it was meant for Itachi, not Hidan.

"I haven't given up and hold no intention of doing so. Don't waste your breath trying to threaten me, puppeteer."

Sasori quirked a brow. "You're a sad excuse that doesn't know a lost cause when he sees one. She isn't going to seek you out to finish your dance, Uchiha. She's done only the opposite."

Hidan remembered the conversation he overheard.

"I can't believe you're behavior, Itachi. Just for sex you-

"It wasn't for something so crude."

"No?"

Itachi had waited, feeding off the tension in the room before answering. "To bond with her meant to make her my partner. You and Nageto-"

"Chose to be together!" Konan hissed, cutting him off. "You didn't give her a choice. You took advantage of a chemical flaw for your own benefit. Like this you're no better than Sasori. I don't want to hear you going after her again like this."

"I'm not some child under your thumb that can be t-" She stopped him with a look. It was at this point Hidan started to turn away, glad it wasn't him getting the verbal lashing. Konan's last few words were hard to miss though.

"You're not to approach her. Not until spring has passed and the damned season of heat is over with. Respect that and you might just have a shot at what Nageto and I built up together."

Sasori released the wires, drawing them back into his artificial hand and leaning back into his seat. Beside Hidan, Itachi did the same. From on the floor Kisame growled.

"It's starting, it's the last minute."

5

The last few seconds flashed across the screen.

4

Hidan looked back over at Itachi and saw the same frozen expression from before. The Uchiha had eyes only for the screen now.

3

Looking at Sasori was like looking at another doll. He was the same as Itachi.

2

Hidan felt his tongue grow back in his mouth. Between the boys he couldn't help but grin. When she got back he would have to play with her too.

1

* * *

It didn't take long before the first body separated from his bike, blood staining the runway in a thin mess from the speed and force of his attack. Racers were vulnerable right away as everyone scrambled for a place on the track, a section they could claim and own. Some would die, others would survive, one would win.

The track was high up, off the ground, suspended between skyscrapers and dipping between buildings to touch the ground and split up before coming back together. There were offshoots and underpasses too, but nearly everyone stayed on the same track together. The most obvious was the fastest path to the prize until they passed away from the edges of the city and closer to the heart.

There was a strip coming up that was flat and level, close to the ground with no sides and a stretch wide enough for ten or twelve riders to pass side by side without touching. Sakura swallowed. She knew what was coming next. Once they hit that stretch people were going to take the chance to knock people out of the race the bloody way. She pressed her body closer to her bike, flat and small like a bullet.

She heard the scream and saw smoke from the crashed bike but no blood. Someone pulled back what looked like a barbed whip, folding it under arm before moving up to take the vacated spot. Sakura saw another racer eye a slot on the track used by Shisui, and a gun came out. There was a shot fired, but it was from a third party that wanted to take out the only other guy with a gun drawn. Shisui glanced back and pulled up, slamming the back end of his bike onto the front of the other gunner. Fire roared out his exhaust and shot him forward, burning the gunner. Twenty six….twenty five-another scream-twenty four….twenty three racers were still alive.

Blood was already on Hana's pipe as she cruised alongside Temari. An alliance was there, as it always had been. In the past they were a team up until the last lap, and then they raced as hard as they could without looking back. This time, they were there for Sakura and it still didn't make any sense to her. Maybe it wasn't a lot for them to give up, but they were giving her something immeasurably precious.

Temari pulled away from Hana and a space opened up between them for Sakura to slip in. She did so gladly. They were like her shields, running off would be attackers with clearly experienced technique. Monsters. The best kind.

She felt it in her gut and looked up to see the first major turn off come up. From this point on the mass could start to split up without losing much time on alternate routes. The road was crumbling in parts and some areas were less sturdy than others, meaning riders had to be more focused on riding around holes and obstacles and less about attacking others. Like the experienced veterans they were, the remaining bikers backed off with their weapons and began splitting off.

"Him." Hana's voice was in Sakura's ears, utilizing the speaker system they had set up earlier. Sakura looked to where Hana's eyes were set and recognized one of the Oto goons.

"Yeah." Speaking was such a trail when speeding and making knee jerk reactions to the road ahead of her. Her veins were singing and her heart was thunder in her chest. She loved the thrill of it all, but she had to stay grounded. She was here to win, not to play. "He's one of them."

"How many are left?" Hana asked.

Temari's voice was strained, but excited. "Hold off, we're at twenty two."

Twenty two riders were left in the race and it wasn't enough to justify breaking formation. Out of those twenty two, there were the three of them and one ally in Shisui. They were still racing and both wanted to win, but Shisui wouldn't attack them. He didn't need to, he was fast all over.

Up ahead there was a pile of rubble the group had to move sharply around. There was more and more destruction on the track ahead of them. There was roar far off and Sakura saw through her visor a angry column of smoke go up as a bridge fell with riders atop it, too old and ruined to withstand the vibrations and force of their bikes. A handful of bikes went down, and one struggled out for a moment before the fall ended him.

"Well?"

The group moved faster and further, overtaking a pair of bikers. Temari reached inside her jacket and pulled something out. There was a hard turn up ahead and they leaned heard together. Sakura saw light and behind them there was a roar of electricity as both bikers lost control of their bikes, engines dead. They weren't dead, but it would be a whole five minutes before their engines could work again.

Hana whistled low. "That was expensive."

Temari's voice was hard, but she tried to make it sound light in spite of the strain. "I have a friend."

"Does that mean we can move now?"

By way of answer temari pulled away and dropped away into her own lane. "Stay close."

"I'll be right back."

Hana dropped something into her engine and it kicked, screaming before her bike shot forward. Sakura watched as her follow Harpy came up alongside of one of the Oto riders and slammed her pipe weapon into the back of his head in her rush past him.

He dropped, dead.

"At this rate more people will be dead than alive out of the racers." It felt like more of a battle on bikes and less than an actual race. That what it looked like when she watched the bootlegged video footage of past races, but it was a whole new thing to see something and to feel it.

"That's how it is every year." They turned hard together, trying to keep Hana in sight. "Half never make it."

Sakura thought back to the two men on bikes who would live, even if the race was something they had no hope of winning anymore. It might have been easier to push them off or take them out with something a bit more deadly and less expensive, but there was a weight in her words that Temari herself probably didn't even recognize. In their past had there been someone who was part of the half that never came back that meant something to Temari?

Hana's voice was garbled in their speaks, but Sakura and Temari could both tell that she was asking for a head count. Sakura scanned the area around them, knowing there were others out of sight on other tracks. Temari was sharp though, having kept track of as much of the race as possible. Her eyes were the sharpest, after all.

"My guess, sixteen, including the three of us and Shisui."

Sakura turned hard, following Temari and falling a little behind. She didn't take turns as well, but her bike ran hotter and a little faster. "Did you see the woman from the starting gate?" Sakura asked Hana. "She's on a green bike with purple accents. Her helmet is lime colored too, but with snake decals."

"I can see her on one of the high roads, she's on her own, even with me." Hana cursed. "Fast fucker."

Sakura remembered white and the feeling of broken bones. "She's from Oto too, don't engage. She's dangerous."

The brunette cursed in the static before her voice came through loud and clear. "Hold tight."

Hana was ahead of them, so she saw it first and called out a warning before she turned sharp to follow a makeshift road that cut through the broke down base of a leaning building. The rubble only increased and more and more of the road became choked with destruction. She saw the shadows of other riders taking ramps more and more in spite of their risk because they were typically cleaner. There were only a few bikes left on the lowest level, but that's where Temari wanted them. It was safer there and it when so much of the race was about staying alive, they needed to put their survival first.

Sakura saw Shisui up ahead of them on a higher overpass that stretched through the streets, cutting around leaning buildings and straight ones. There were a number of overpasses, and one of them disappeared into the belly of a building after a sharp turn, catching the rider by surprise as he swerved and crashed into what used to be an office, taking him out of the race as well as the man behind him.

Shisui and Anko were pulling ahead on their overpass.

"We're almost at the halfway point," Temari called into their headpieces.

Once they were through the halfway the track would get cleaner. Sakura knew to save her Nitrate pills. Two silver and one gold. That was all the rules allowed each contestant. The race had few other rules to follow, but all the racers were searched thoroughly before being let onto the track.

Once things looked clean she would use one to pull up with the rest of the group where Hana was. She thought it funny how Temari was regarded the better biker, but Hana was the one way ahead of them.

"I have a pass. I'm taking it up."

Temari cursed at Hana's words. "Stay down. They'll pick you off."

"They won't see me."

Hana didn't seem like she was going to listen, and a second later Sakura knew Hana wouldn't. The red and silver bike with wolves on both side was streaking up into an overpass via a makeshift ramp. Temari cursed again when Hana laughed into the speakers. Sakura would have never known they were ever at each other's throats.

"I'm gonna kill her if she doesn't die first."

Sakura lowered herself further, making herself as flat and even as possible, seeing as much of the future track as she could with her enhanced eyes. She give her bike more speed and began to pull forward. She had less time to make adjustments if something came up in the middle of the road, but she felt she could do it. Temari was better at it than Sakura, but Sakura wanted to pull forward first.

Sakura was ahead and that's why she saw it first.

There was another rider on the overpass alongside Hana. It was the one who she had flipped the bird to earlier. She was gaining on him, but he saw her. She tapped the back end of his bike and he began to swerve. Hana pulled up and rammed his back again, this time it was enough to really send him into a tailspin. There were no railings, and he tumbled down even though they were not that high up. Maybe he lived when he fell, but Sakura hope he didn't. Before he fell a knife launched from it's holder and Hana caught it in her arm.

Temari screamed and ripped ahead, taking in the track as it came with expert eyes and excellent reflexes. Hana was ahead, still going, traveling slower and wobbling down the overpass with no sides when Temari pulled back, looking over her shoulder at Sakura.

"She'll bleed out and die without you. There's no aid out here," Sakura said, understanding her friend's worry. "Go to her."

"But you won't-"

"I'll make it. I have to, so I will."

Sakura didn't have anything more to say so she pulled forward, letting her bike roar as she pushed it to as fast as it could go while still maintaining turning capabilities. She wasn't in last place, but she was behind. There might be people behind her, but she was more worried about Anko and Shisui. Was she still alive, and was he okay?

The road started to clear up and it was as if she was running through a time rift. Everything came up in front of her so slowly. She felt like she was caught in slow motion She could see the track as it wound and curved out ahead of her, she saw the holes and the crack and the uplifted chunks of road from earthquakes and tremors long ago. She breathed deep and leaned in.

Sakura was built for speed and she loved it. She didn't have to use any of her nitrate and already she could see herself taking in ground on the back end of the main group. There were six of them. Anko and Shisui at opposite ends, neither towards the front. They had just passed the halfway point, it wasn't time to pull ahead just yet. Sakura understood that.

Up ahead a number of the overpasses come together and a fourth ends with nothing. She thought the racer on that pass would crash and die, but the biker ran off the edge and landed with a jolt on the main road, swerving around a bit to regain traction before roaring up again. Seven of them and her. Eight racers left and there would be fewer soon once the road evened out and it became a fighting field.

Someone in the middle fed a silver nitrate into his engine and he ripped off ahead. Passing a male in the lead, he would have gone farther had not the man in the lead drew his gun and shot the racer in the leg and then in the thigh, missing several other times and hitting the man only by luck.

Sakura heard the cry of pain and saw the blood. He wouldn't die for it, but he could race anymore and they passed him up with ease. Sakura pulled off to the side, coming up behind Anko. The man in the front tossed his empty gun magazine and with one hand, loaded a second one. His shots were over his shoulder and wild. If he hit anything it was luck and not skill. He was shooting blind. She heard something hit metal and felt wild rush through her bones, then she felt fire.

She didn't look down, but she felt her chest, moving her free hand down to the space on her front just to the right of her navel, underneath the last rib cage. It was wet, and when she pulled her hand away she felt the way it stuck to her fingers. She didn't see red, but she knew she had been shot.

The nose of her bike wavered, but she didn't lessen her speed. This wouldn't kill her. This was something she could regenerate from. Oh, but the word was burning in her ears and she couldn't move beyond the shock to actually feel anything other than the minor disorientation that comes from shock. The wind was an angry hand with tens of fingers, all tearing at her.

Shisui saw her wound, bright against the white of the tee shirt she wore under her red jacket. Sakura saw the moment his eyes saw her stomach because his eyes flashed red. She remembered seeing that once before, seeing another Uchiha-Itachi- shift his eyes from black to red with high levels of emotion.

Shisui was pissed.

He pulled up, hand out. He was on the man's bumper when he reached out and grabbed the goon off his bike. Sakura watched the separation take place. Without its rider the man's bike fell away, turning on it's side and screaming in the debris as metal was marred. The man twisted, a fist read to swing but Shisui was faster, dropping the man and pulling away. Sakura suspected the man survived, but a second later he burst into flames, screaming. A second later they were to far away to hear or see more. Sakura instead looked to Shisui, who was staring straight ahead, a tear of red rolling down his cheek. Her eyes narrowed. Bleeding from the eyes. Damn.

Six of them left and one of them was her. Less than half the race left. Her wound was burning but the surrounding area was turning black and she felt the opening in her side start to close. The metal feel free, pushed out as her skin began to knit back together. She was burning and black patches were blooming across her skin. She felt stronger, fuller. She could do this.

Her wings scratched her back, longer and fuller than before. In two week they had grown, but with the healing factor she felt week it would normally take to close a wound that size age her all over. No, just her wings. She could control that much of her own body. Maybe she wouldn't live long at this rate, but she would live.

Shisui was even with her, pulling up close. His eyes went straight to her side and then to her face. She could feel his worry, even if she couldn't turn her head to see where he was looking. He was fast, but he was beside her.

"I'll be fine," Sakura spoke into her helmet, knowing only Hana and Temari would be able to hear her and it wouldn't make sense to them, but she imagined Shisui could hear her and knew what she was saying. If she could feel his worry he could feel her assurance and her strength. She was made for speed and wind and danger and blood. She would not be overcome.

He knew. He felt it and she knew he knew. The pair pulled forward together, around a body of rubble and away from a fallen sigh, still flickering with a black fairy girl selling fast food.

There is a fourth of the track left, maybe left, and things are looking cleaner and cleaner the further they travel. Sakura sees ahead of them a bridge running over an artificial lake long since stagnant and tainted with mercury. Mercury looks beautiful in the light, sparkling like diamonds, but it's not something she can fall into. The bridge is wide and they'll all be able to pass just fine.

There is a flash of yellow and then of red as bombs go off behind them and off to the side. Sakura almost jerks, but doesn't. Shisui doesn't seem to flinch. 'The last leg of the race is going to have…surprises.' Those were his words to her. This race was a bloodbath. They were more likely to die then finish alive. He had smiled at the time, winking to her. 'Just stick close to me and you'll be gold.'

Anko was tied for the lead with one of the other racers, Sakura and Shisui held the center, and another pair of racers were puttering out, falling further and further behind.

Up ahead there is a tower and at the top of the tower is her Obelisk. Around the two were four or five different elevated roads. Soon the bridge they were crossing would divert into lanes that separated. Sakura surged forward, not caring that she was gaining on Anko.

There were bullets. Small ones, but a rain of them shot out from somewhere in the ground and Sakura had to turn hard to miss it. Another trap made someone behind her swerve and they tumbled from their bike, alive but out of the race. Sakura cursed and pushed herself, seeing the divides coming up. Soon they would be separating. Soon they would be-

Nothing but foul things fell from her lips as another volley of projectiles found her side. She heard her bike get hit as three shards of something from an explosion lodged in her arm. Her recovery time was shorter, black blooming immediately around the wounds, ejecting the foreign material and closing her up. Her wings poked out from underneath her jacket. It was in shreds, she would need a new one soon.

She hadn't heard it, but the last guy behind her was no longer there. It was Shisui, Anko, her and another random racer who was tied with Anko. They two of them were trying to edge each other out before they got to the divides and Sakura took the chance to try and pass Anko on her open side. She pulled away from Shisui, taking lead and was close when Something from inside her tan coat bolted out. Sakura felt teeth on her wrist and looked down to see a snake head on her arm, fangs in her wrist, sinking deep. Anko turned to look at her suddenly, grin wide. Sakura felt his gut roll with unease as Shisui came up beside her to cut the snake head with a well aimed blade hidden inside his jacket.

Anko laughed like someone mad and cut the acceleration. She stopped in the middle of the road and laughed as they pulled away. She was out of the race.

Three left. Shisui didn't hesitate, another blade caught the tire of the other rider and it didn't stop him, but it was distraction enough for Shisui to set fire to the back of the man's jacket with just his eyes. Sakura felt the snap in the air as flames manifested out of nothing.

The power of an Uchiha.

He wasn't out, but he had to pull back and roll off his bike to kill the flames that made him scream. Shisui laughed and Sakura heard it over the sound of the wind. They were on the overpass that when higher than the others. They were in the wind, free in it.

When he laughed she heard it and when he called out to her she heard it too. "Told you!" She remembered. 'Just stick close to me and you'll be gold.' They were going to do it. They were going to win. They were going to survive this and make it home with her memories and after all the others had died or gotten lost behind them, they were finally going to make it.

The road wasn't under them anymore. She couldn't hear anything. The word was without sound. Both her eardrums were shot as she felt the tower her Obelisk sat perched atop give out and collapse before she saw any of it. Sakura felt her body fall alongside the rubble that used to be the road they were on as she and Shisui tumbled down. The word was awash in slow motion. No sound, every second was an eternity. Everything was coming down.

She was knocked from her bike and in the air she felt Shisu's arm reach for her. He was falling right alongside her, but he pulled her to him, their helmets meeting. His arm around her, the were a moment in time, and then they were fallen things.

Everything around her is going up in thunder and nothing stands. They were higher than it all, so everything fell before them, but they still fell the longest. Maybe she screamed, but she couldn't hear anything. There was no wind left in her lungs. Oh.

She was broken between metal and glass and concrete, her arms awkward and her body bleeding. One of her arms was broken, the other was really broken. Her back screamed with fractures. She swallowed, feeling the black flowers bloom all over her body. They devoured her, turning her black. Bullet holes took weeks. Bones took months. She felt the strain on her life, she felt suck dry even as the marrow in her became whole again.

Sakura remembered how to breath. The world was a mess around her and she was staring up at a sky that wasn't real. The City of OldDestruction only had gray clouds for her eyes. She felt fabric and turned to see a black mass beside her. Shisui lay at an odd angle, her legs useless.

"Sakura." His voice was was barely there. It scared Sakura how empty it sounded.

She tugged her helmet off, it was cracked and fell apart in her hands. His was still in one piece so she moved to tug it off too, careful not to move his neck or anything else of his body. She didn't know how badly he was hurt even though she knew his legs were a mess that would never mend. Shisui, the cheetah who loved speed more than she ever had would never walk again if he even survived this. Her insides had been a mess, there was no way to know how badly his internal wounds were.

He chuckled and she looked up, feeling the move shake free tears caught in her lashes. She couldn't feel her face. She couldn't feel anything. The black was fading, but her skin was still dark with the evidence of her enhancements. Shisui's eyes were red again, but they were fixed on her.

"Surprise, right?"

She choked. "Shisui. You-"

"I know. I can't move my-" she saw his throat move as he swallowed. A finger twitched on his left hand. "I can't move anything, but I can't feel my legs. Can you come closer?"

She edged over as close as she dared, laying a hand on the stone beside his head. She hovered over him, her skin turning pale again. There was more water falling from her eyes and she felt the tears cutting through the dust on her face. It was a dirty mix on her lips. She tore a glove off and wipe her face, furious.

"You're going to be okay," Shisui whispered.

She gasped for breath. "God-Shisui. You're the-Shisui-" She couldn't breath. This wasn't happening. No one was supposed to get hurt. No one was supposed to die for her. This was her obelisk, her stupid wish, her desire. It was her fault. "Shisui." All she could make out was his name. Anything else was too much.

"It's funny. I feel so…calm. It's very…clear now." He tried to breath and the exhale sounded like bedsheets ripping. He was a mess inside as well. Her hands were shaking in front of her face. His eyes never left her. "Don't blame yourself. You're blaming yourself. I…I hate seeing you cry. But…I'm selfish. I'm glad you're crying for me."

"God!" She couldn't breath.

He shouldn't have been able to, but he moved his hand, nothing past his wrist worked, and his hand couldn't go anywhere but Sakura reached for it with her own hand. He felt her and threaded his fingers through hers. He held her as tightly as he could. "You're beautiful. I don't know if I've ever told you that. I was selfish. I wanted to be next to you. I wanted it to be me."

"Shisui." Her mind was a mess. She didn't know how to make words anymore. She wanted to tell him sorry, she wanted to beg his forgiveness. She wanted to tell him he wasn't selfish and that she wasn't worth his words and that he was amazing and funny and kind and she always loved that about him even if it wasn't the way he wanted her to love him. She couldn't feel the way he felt about her, even now as he lay dying, and it devastated her.

He saw something in her eyes and his smile was so sad, even if it was wide. "I know, it wouldn't have been me. That's why I dreamed so badly. They'll tell you it was just science, what we felt, but I fell in love with you, the Sakura that's kind and selfless and lost and beautiful beyond words." He swallowed again and it looked like he was fighting to move his saliva down a partly crushed throat. His voice was barely there. "Science can only compel a person so far, but I loved you. I love you Sakura. Please just lie to me."

"I love you too, Shisui."

His eyes fluttered, and he tried to swallow again. His breaths were half there, never reaching his lungs fully. She could hear the destruction within his body. In the city of destruction, the most broken thing was him.

He couldn't open his eyes anymore, but he was holding on. "Kiss me, Sakura?" There were tears caught in between his lashes."Please?"

She didn't hesitate. Bending down, she traced his lips with hers. Her tears fell onto his face and with what he had left, he tried to return the kiss. His tears were fat, rolling free from the corners of his eyes. She felt him respond, meeting her, but then he was gone, falling away from her.

She pulled back and saw his closed eyes and knew there was nothing behind them anymore. Shisui was gone. All that was left was a corpse. She had been here before, kissing a dead lover. Her throat closed up and she had to scramble to keep from retching dead blood anywhere near him. She wailed, her body sobbing loud and violent.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, oh God, God, oh no, no, no, no, no, God, no.

All she could do was scream.

"Kabuto won't be happy to hear my toxins don't work on her black skin."

Her head snapped back and her eyes were wide. Fangs and claws, she was a monster staring up at Anko who stood perched on the edge of a cross beam, the gleaming black Obelisk already in her hand. She rolled her eyes at Sakura. "You should have know this was all our trap. We had this in mind for a month. Your fault, you said you liked races. Remember, the interview from your first fight tournament-the one you won?"

Sakura heaved more blood, but didn't look away from the woman up high. She was so high up, perched a safe distance away, looking smug. "You."

Anko smiled. "Me."

Her words were guttural, coming from somewhere deep inside her. "Dream killer." Fangs and claws and blood.

Anko flinched, eyes widening. "You're cheating. Trauma isn't supposed to unlock any of those pesky memories."

She was high. Pain flooded through her body and turned into something else. "I'm going to kill you." Fangs and claws and blood, oh, so much blood.

Ank rolled her eyes. "Come at me and I'll fold you up. You're too weak to fight my sedatives in this state." She raised a hand and snakes slithered out from inside her jacket. "Not that you could reach me from way down there." Her largest snake hissed, fangs bared.

A year of healing grew her hair and when she pulled her torn jacket away, her wings were finally massive. Anko flinched, ready to take a step back but Sakura was already launching herself into the air, the way Temari and Hana taught her how to. Her wings were blood red , catching the wind and lifting her higher with massive thrusts like thunder and she was on Anko, tearing into her snakes with her claws and fangs the way birds tore into snakes. Anko cried out, blood gushing from her hand, but Sakura wasn't done. Her fingers were talons sharper than knives and they sliced through the flesh and dug into her bone. Anko screamed but it wasn't enough to stop Sakura from severing hand from wrist.

Ank reached for something, struggling to get away and grabbed the Obelisk. She raised it to strike Sakura with it but Sakura saw what was coming. Snarling the green eyed girl raised a hand and grabbed the black device before it could do any damage.

There was another boom as her DNA came into contact with the exterior and all of a sudden there was white all through her. She felt sucker punched and screamed, scrambling away with the Obelisk still in her hand. She was unmade as memories, images, and faces flashed through her mind. She screamed and Anko ran, leaving her hand behind. The Obelisk beeped and the outer layer shed, exposing a smaller Obelisk that didn't look like it was made of machine. Sakura dropped her hand to it, gasping.

The world melted away, falling apart piece by piece.

The last thing she remembered was the rain.

* * *

"And the rest is rust and stardust."  
— Vladimir Nabokov

* * *

 **So ends the Crystal City Saga: The Kingdom Of Gilded Monsters  
Prepare for the world of Gods**

* * *

"I dreamed this, does that mean it didn't happen? does it have to happen in the world to be real?"  
Louise Glück, from "Castile

* * *

AN:/ I just finish. I wrote the last 10,000 words Friday night and Saturday morning. I did not sleep at all. I don't know how I'm still alive. I can't regulate the temperature of my body anymore, among other things. I'm equal parts impressed with my ability to write so much and equal parts afraid by how stupid I can be-but I wanted this out there this week for you guys. I'll recover tomorrow. Maybe.

I have twenty or so minutes to put this out before work so I'm gonna babble real quick. This is a stand alone piece. You do not need to read any of the other Obelisk stories to understand it, however reading them would enhance the experience. Things like kissing a dead lover would make sense as something for her to remember and dream killers would be a thing. You can go read those stories, but you don't have to. This is just for fun.

Peridot started out as something that was fun and light and ended up destroying me at three in the morning. I wanted to see a cyber punk world, partly because the kingdom I ended up writing about was very much like the first one (Kingdom of Man) set in America dated in the past. I love stretching myself. I love coming up with things and painting mental pictures.

Peridot is the result of things like Ego Proxy, Akira, the manga DOGS, music videos, Daft Punk, Tron, Maximum Ride, STORMDRAGON666's AIRBORNE fanficition, (Check that out), apocalypse fashion, Princess AI, and awesome fan art (You can thank Erinkipps for the sexy stuff-also check her out on tumblr)! Also, the anime movie Redline was what I had in my mind for the race at the end and the music Yellow Line what was playing on loop as I wrote that last chunk.

I'm really proud of this, but I want breakfast before work and I can't feel my limbs, so I'mma leave you with this.

 _ **Please Review**_

I'd actually really like to know what parts of my writing came out sounding good and what I need to work on. Also, I love hearing from you guys if you enjoyed the piece or what you thought. I just really like hearing from you.

 _ **Vesper Chan**_


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